[Assam] [WaterWatch] Old plan to divert rivers against "hydrologic cycle"
Chan Mahanta
cmahanta at charter.net
Thu Mar 1 22:31:19 EST 2007
>Look at what Irrigation has done to Central
>Asia's Cotton/Agro economy! >Diversion of waters
>--now not reaching the Aral-to pointlessly dry
>up in the >desert sun- was a great and
>calculated vision of Soviet planners.Many in
>West >hate that prosperity out of
>McCarthyism-still not dead and buried.
*** That was a GREAT PLAN? How ridiculous can one get?
At 7:32 AM +0530 3/2/07, mc mahant wrote:
>BBC can shout itself hoarse about the Aral-- a
>wrong place for people to have settled looking
>for easy non-productive city 'SERVICE-industry'
>jobs!These can easily melt back to where they
>came from--or crowd the Bazaars in Moscow!
>
>Look at what Irrigation has done to Central
>Asia's Cotton/Agro economy! Diversion of waters
>--now not reaching the Aral-to pointlessly dry
>up in the desert sun- was a great and
>calculated vision of Soviet planners.Many in
>West hate that prosperity out of
>McCarthyism-still not dead and buried.
>
>Prez Kalam will go down in history as a great
>visionary. He does not care for name and fame.
>He dreams of and works for a massive
>rejuvenation to Science-aided Agro-Industry for
>all of India. Hats off to him !
>
> Dogs will bark at anybody travelling by
>offbeat paths to discover new openings.
>
>India needs fullest use of fresh water into
>Agriculture--everywhere there is a farming
>community!
>
>Ideally Prez Kalam should spell out his net aim
>loud and Clear--"Every drop of fresh Water India
>receives should be deployed to benefit India in
>the long-term--to synergically help
>agriculture-to feed the other part of Humanity
>who have not(South Africa,Australia,Oil-rich
>Arabiya). River-linking in a hundred rings and
>sub-rings and loops is an essential
>pre-requisite for :
>
>Minimizing Diesel dependency to deplete the
>water tables-so needed forthe tree roots.
>Avoiding salinization of our soils . At the
>current rate of groundwater pump-up, our soils
>will be useless in 2-3 decades."
>Mukul Mahant
>
>Consulting Engineer
>
>From Assam
>
>
>From: yadaswati at gmail.com
>Reply-To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.com
>To: waterwatch at yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [WaterWatch] Old plan to divert rivers against "hydrologic cycle"
>Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 03:40:30 -0800 (PST)
>
>Note: Dr Kalam and his ilk seem to be paving the
>way for India to commit a blunder akin to
>'world's worst disaster' in Aral Sea through
>their river diversion plans and their highly
>questionable argument suggesting that water
>which goes to sea is wasted. They wear blinkers
>towards unversal truths like Hydrologic Cycle-as
>to How Water Moves Around the World. This
>“hydrologic cycle ” comprises nature ’s method
>of replenishing, redistributing and purifying
>the world' s natural water resources. But some
>not so sane elements are indeed arguing as if
>indeed the Earth is Flat.
>
>In spite of calls for international assistance
>to save the Aral Sea, efforts to stop the sea's
>evaporation by reducing water wastage or
>reducing irrigation have not yet materialised.
>
>In June 2004, scientists predicted the sea would vanish within 15 years.
>
>The people of the region continue to suffer as a
>result - malnutrition is rife, as is TB and
>anaemia. Cancer of the oesophagus is the highest
>in the world.
>
>Most worrying is the discovery that local people are suffering genetic damage.
>
>This means their children and grandchildren
>might be more susceptible to cancer as a result
>of the pesticide residues from the cotton fields.
>
>Cotton continues to be Uzbekistan's largest export earner.
>
>The Royal Geographical Society has unveiled
>evidence that the devastated region around the
>Aral Sea in Central Asia is the world's worst
>ecological disaster.
>
>Three British scientists have just come back
>from a visit to the lake that straddles the
>former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and
>Uzbekistan.
>
>What was once the fourth largest area of fresh
>water in the world has shrunk by two-thirds. It
>has fallen in depth by more that 14 metres (45
>feet) in the past 30 years endangering the lives
>of the four million inhabitants of the region.
>
>Soviet irrigation policies from the early 1960s
>diverted water from its two sources, the Amu
>Darya, or Oxus, and the Syr Darya in order to
>supply vast areas of cotton fields to the south
>of the Aral.
>
>Infant mortality high
>
>David Brundsen, professor of Geography at Kings
>College London, said the situation was far worse
>than they had anticipated.
>
>What was once a thriving fishing industry has
>been destroyed and the climate has changed, with
>shorter dryer summers and longer colder winters.
>
>Chemical pollution has caused serious illnesses.
>
>Infant mortality is worse than any other
>developing country in the world, with 10% of
>children dying in their first year.
>
>Death from chronic gastritis and kidney disease
>has increased by 15%, heart disease has doubled
>and incidences of kidney disease has risen
>15-fold as drinking water becomes ever more
>salty and polluted.
>
>Cancer has increased tenfold and death from TB
>is 21 times higher than it was in the 1960s.
>
>Abandoned ships lie on the 80km (50 miles) of
>exposed seabed, now encrusted with salt and
>agricultural chemicals that are causing
>illnesses.
>
>In the late 1980s the water level fell so low
>that the ancient sea split into two bodies of
>water.
>
>Tony French, senior lecturer in geography at
>University College London, said that at this
>rate there would be very little left of the Aral
>Sea by the millennium.
>
>Russian scientists reviving old Soviet plan to divert rivers
>
>Russian scientists are reviving an old Soviet
>plan to divert some of Siberia's mightiest
>rivers to the parched former Soviet republics of
>central Asia.
>
>Its backers say it will solve a growing water
>crisis in the region and replenish the now
>desiccated Aral Sea, once the world's
>fourth-largest inland sea. The $40 billion
>scheme could also gain international support.
>
>Recent increases in the flows of Siberia's
>rivers, probably due to global warming, have
>raised fears that a less salty Arctic Ocean
>could shut down the Gulf Stream and trigger icy
>winters across Europe. Diverting part of the
>flow of the rivers could prevent that.
>
>But some experts say that the hugely ambitious
>scheme will cause social, economic and
>environmental disaster.
>
>The megaproject was rejected by the Soviet
>leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. But
>in recent months it has won vocal support.
>Backers include Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, a
>possible successor to Vladimir Putin as Russian
>president, alongside central Asian leaders and a
>growing number of Russian scientists. One of the
>country's senior environmental scientists has
>told New Scientist he has resumed research on
>the project.
>
>Thirsty crop
>The proposed scheme would be roughly equivalent
>to irrigating Mexico from the North American
>Great Lakes. It would drive a canal 200 metres
>wide and 16 metres deep southwards for some 2500
>kilometres, from the confluence of the
>north-flowing rivers Ob and Irtysh, to replenish
>the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers near the Aral
>Sea (see map).
>
>The canal would carry 27 cubic kilometres of
>water a year. Though this is just seven per cent
>of the Ob's flow it would bring 50 per cent more
>water to the lower Aral Sea basin.
>
>The rationale behind the scheme is clear.
>Central Asian states that were once part of the
>Soviet Union are economically dependent on
>cotton, a notoriously thirsty crop. Today the
>region's two biggest cotton-growing nations,
>Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have the highest
>per capita water consumption in the world. Yet
>Turkmenistan says it intends to double cotton
>production in the next decade.
>
>International plans to kick-start the economy of
>northern Afghanistan, on the upper reaches of
>the Amudarya, depend on taking as much as 10
>cubic kilometres of water a year from that
>river. With climate models predicting big
>decreases in rainfall in central Asia, the
>International Crisis Group, an NGO based in
>Brussels, Belgium, recently forecast water wars
>in the region.
>
>Already, the Amudarya and Syrdarya, which once
>had combined flows greater than that of the
>Nile, have been largely emptied by massive
>irrigation projects to grow the cotton. As the
>rivers died, so has the Aral Sea into which they
>drain. It has lost three-quarters of its water
>since 1960, leaving former ports up to 150
>kilometres from the receding shoreline, and a
>salty wilderness where the sea used to be.
>
>Dilapidated and inefficient
>Meanwhile, irrigation canals in Uzbekistan and
>Turkmenistan have become increasingly
>dilapidated and inefficient. Few of the region's
>50,000 kilometres of irrigation channels are
>sealed, so much of their water goes to waste.
>According to a World Bank study, some 60 per
>cent of water intended for farms does not reach
>the fields.
>
>Two years ago, while on a visit to Putin in
>Moscow, Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov,
>revived the idea of diverting Siberian rivers.
>"Although it seems ambitious, it appears to be
>the only tangible solution to the ecological and
>other problems caused by the drying of the Aral
>Sea," says Abdukhalil Razzakov of the Tashkent
>State Economic University in Uzbekistan.
>
>Now, after more than a decade without discussion
>of the project in Russia, it is back on the
>table. This week, Igor Zonn, director of
>Soyuzvodproject, a Russian government agency in
>charge of water management and ecology, told New
>Scientist: "We are beginning to revise the old
>project plans for the diversion of Siberian
>rivers. The old material has to be gathered from
>more than 300 institutes."
>
>In January, Luzhkov visited Kazakhstan to
>promote the plan. He says that central Asia
>would have to pay for the water, but behind the
>scenes Moscow sees the scheme as a way to
>rebuild its political and economic power in the
>region. It also wants to avoid a collapse of its
>southern neighbours' economies, which could send
>a flood of ecological refugees towards Russia.
>One-fifth of the population of the Karakalpak
>region of Uzbekistan has emigrated since 1990.
>
>But, as in the 1980s, the scheme will be hugely
>controversial in Russia. The chairman of the
>Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of
>Sciences, Nikolai Dobretsov, has told New
>Scientist that the diversion "would threaten the
>Ob basin with eco-catastrophe and socio-economic
>disaster", destroying fisheries and upsetting
>the local climate.
>
>Efficiency gains
>Some environmentalists support the scheme as a
>means to revive the Aral Sea. But Oleg Vasilyev,
>a former head of the Institute of Water and
>Ecology Problems, part of the Russian Academy of
>Sciences, who backs the plan, says the water
>should be used primarily for irrigation, and so
>would never reach the Aral.
>
>Central Asia now faces a choice: begin massive
>reforms that will allow a more efficient use of
>water and less reliance on thirsty crops like
>cotton, or buy in water from outside. Nikita
>Glazovsky, a leading Russian geographer and
>former deputy environment minister under Boris
>Yeltsin, says the region's engineers "still find
>it easier to divert rivers than to stop
>inefficient irrigation". And reform has so far
>proved beyond the leaders of central Asia, whose
>methods of government have changed little since
>Soviet times.
>
>If Russia pursues the plan, the global
>ecological repercussions are bound to loom
>large. In the 1980s, western scientists feared
>that reducing the flows of north-flowing
>Siberian rivers would damage the Arctic ice cap
>and upset global climate.
>
>Now the tables have turned, and the worry is
>more about the increasing flow caused by global
>warming. The Ob and nearby rivers pour seven per
>cent more fresh water into the Arctic Ocean than
>70 years ago, and climate models indicate that
>flows could rise by up to 80 per cent by the end
>of the century.
>
>The arrival of such large volumes of fresh water
>into the Arctic Ocean could lead to a sudden
>breakdown of a global ocean circulation system
>that ultimately drives the Gulf Stream, which
>keeps Europe warm in winter. Such a breakdown
>could leave Europe facing a new ice age as the
>rest of the planet warms.
>
>Work on the diversion project is unlikely to
>begin soon, and it faces many financial,
>political, ecological and design hurdles. But a
>project on this vast scale no longer seems
>unthinkable. China's south-north project to take
>water from the Yangtze river to the parched
>Yellow river is as large and expensive, and is
>under way.
>
>Some observers believe that Putin might like to
>leave the canal as a lasting symbol of his
>Presidency. According to Victor Brovkin, a
>Russian expert in climate modelling, now at the
>Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in
>Germany, "If Putin wants to respond to Bush's
>plan to go to Mars, this might be it."
>
>New Scientist, BBC, UNEP
>
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