On the history of the project "transfer of northern rivers". A matter of special humidity

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02/17/2004, Tue, 10:02, Moscow time

In recent months, interest has been growing in plans to turn the flow of Siberian rivers south, into brotherly Central Asia, which seemed to have long sunk into oblivion. Now the West is insisting on this, even ready to help in finding the necessary $40 billion. The project has influential supporters in Russia, first of all, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Experts note with alarm the growing interest in plans to transfer part of the flow of the great Siberian rivers to the Central Asian region. Central Asian cotton exporters, already world record holders for per capita water consumption, have a powerful new ally. It became, oddly enough, Europe.

The fight for climate: all or nothing

It is believed that the volume of fresh water brought into the Arctic Ocean by Siberian rivers is increasing over time. According to some data, the Ob River alone has become 7% more watery over the past 70 years. This may be due to global warming, although there is no clear evidence on this matter.

One of the consequences of this phenomenon - an increase in freshwater flow in a northern direction - may be a deterioration in the climate in Europe. According to one hypothesis, as the British weekly New Scientist writes, an increase in the flow of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean will reduce its salinity, which ultimately could lead to a significant change in the regime of the warm Gulf Stream current. The consequence of such an influence would be a noticeable deterioration of the climate on the European subcontinent. It is assumed that redirecting part of the freshwater flow of Siberian rivers somewhere else would save Europe from cold, snowy winters.

Heavyweights “for”, specialists “against”?

The project, which seemed to have discredited itself long ago, now has influential patrons - in particular, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who announced this on the eve of last year, 2003.

At the same time, many scientists are of the opposite opinion. The consequences of the implementation of this project will be significant climate change, waterlogging and flooding of the territory Western Siberia, taking into account the forecast of global warming. In addition, polluted rivers, such as the Ob, Irtysh, and Tobol, are unlikely to be suitable for irrigating the fields of Central Asia (see below for more details).

However, a number of observers draw attention to the other side of the issue - the construction of the Great Siberian-Aral Canal would become a symbol worthy of crowning the presidency of Vladimir Putin. So, according to Viktor Brovkin, a climate modeler at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, if Vladimir Putin wanted to respond to Bush's ambitious Mars project with something equally ambitious, building a canal from Siberia it would be perfect for the Aral Sea.

“Super channel” and its super consequences

The project proposed today, according to Western experts, strongly resembles the construction of a water pipeline from the Great American Lakes to Mexico City. An example is also given of the Chinese project to save the Yellow River, which is drying up in the north, at the expense of the deep southern Yangtze.

It is planned to dig a canal 200 meters wide and 16 meters deep and 2,500 kilometers long from the confluence of the Ob and Irtysh to the south, to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which flow into the Aral Sea. Estimated channel capacity 27 cubic meters. km of water per year. For the Ob River this is 6-7% of the annual flow, and for the Aral Sea basin it is more than 50%. And, apparently, the process has already begun.

Igor Zonn, director of the Russian Soyuzvodoproekt, recently said in an interview with the British weekly New Scientist that his department is starting to revise previous plans for transferring the flow of Siberian rivers. For this purpose, in particular, it is necessary to collect materials from more than 300 institutes. At the same time, Luzhkov, while on a visit to Kazakhstan in January, presented a plan he liked.

The rationale for the project is obvious. The economy of Central Asian states depends on cotton, an extremely moisture-loving crop. Two largest manufacturer cotton in the region, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are by far the largest consumers of water (per capita) in the world. At the same time, Turkmenistan intends to double cotton production in the next ten years.

The Amudarya and Syr Darya, which flow into the Aral Sea, together carry more water than the Nile, but most of it does not go into the Aral, but partly into the sand, partly into branched irrigation systems, the length of which is about 50 thousand km. Irrigation systems are deteriorating, and up to 60% of water does not reach the fields. The Aral Sea is rapidly becoming shallow - its surface has been reduced by three quarters since 1960, and until recently functioning ports were located one and a half hundred kilometers from the sea, and an environmental disaster occurred: undiluted pesticides from the dried cotton fields of Central Asia caused mass illness and death of the local population .

But we still need to help the international community’s plans to develop the economy of northern Afghanistan, which will require withdrawing up to 10 cubic kilometers of water per year from the Amu Darya. Only Russia can save the distressed economy of Central Asia.

Scientists' forecasts

Expert opinions regarding the consequences of the great construction project of the 21st century differ diametrically. For example, the chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Northern Affairs and Minority Peoples, Alexander Nazarov, on the eve of 2003, expressed the idea that the implementation of the project to turn Siberian rivers into Central Asia would cause an outflow of oil and gas business from Western Siberia.

Even supporters of the turn of the northern rivers, for example, academician Oleg Vasiliev, former director of the Institute of Water and environmental problems SB RAS, express the opinion that all extra water, most likely, will go to irrigate fields without reaching the Aral Sea.

On the one hand, the implementation of the project will entail a disaster. Nikolai Dobretsov, head of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, stated this in an interview with New Scientist. In his opinion, “the turn threatens the Ob River basin with an environmental disaster and socio-economic disaster” because it will destroy fisheries and change the local climate. The long-term consequences of the river diversion, both for Russia and for the entire continent, are also not entirely clear.

On the other hand, there is also a fly in the ointment. It will be possible to save Europe from excessively cold and snowy winters. Reversing part of the Ob's flow to Central Asia will help cope with the growing shortage of water resources in the region, which Russia is extremely interested in, and also save the Aral Sea from drying up. The Central Asian states will buy water, thereby giving the government another source of funds for the treasury. Moscow's political and economic influence on the region will increase. Surely, the problem of unemployment will be solved, and also, possibly, migration. And Russia will be able to adequately, albeit asymmetrically, object to Bush, who is carried away by Mars.

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1 Plans to transfer part of the flow of the great Siberian rivers to the Central Asian region began to be seriously considered for implementation when the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was headed by Nikita Khrushchev. A group of scientists quite influential at that time worked to substantiate this project. Then it was assumed that it was possible to transfer a significant part of the waters, and not just flood waters, which make up 5-7% of the flow. But after Khrushchev was removed and Leonid Brezhnev came to power, the “great” project was put on hold, since the new general secretary was not his supporter.
Let us remember that in the 70-80s. the project of turning the Siberian rivers was widely discussed, and by 1986 it was already ready for implementation. However, under public pressure, already during perestroika, the USSR Ministry of Water Resources had to abandon its idea. The project was finally buried by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev. Since then, the hydrological regime of Siberian rivers has changed significantly, which is clearly reflected in the flooding of the city of Lensk.

2 At the end of 2002, the mayor of Moscow proposed to President Vladimir Putin to revive the project of transferring part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia. According to Yuri Luzhkov, the time has come to correct this mistake, which he notified President Vladimir Putin about in the format of a problem note. Putin imposed a resolution to “study the issue” and sent the document to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, that is, to the Russian government. Photocopies of the “Problem note on the issue of mutually beneficial use of excess and flood waters of Siberian rivers for the inclusion in economic circulation of lands suitable for irrigation in Russia (in the south of Western Siberia) and Central Asia” signed by Yuri Luzhkov and an appendix (feasibility study) on nine pages, according to Kommersant-Daily (dated 06.12.2002), they got into large quantities into the hands of journalists on December 4 at the government building. On the photocopies, all the headings of the forms, incoming and outgoing numbers, the names of the officials to whom the letter was written for execution were carefully erased one bare text on clean sheets papers and signature of Yuri Luzhkov.
Two weeks later, at a press conference on December 19, 2002, Yuri Luzhkov said that the proposal to transfer part of the flood flows of the Irtysh and Ob to the south would definitely be implemented. At the same time, he emphasized that there is a “distortion of his proposal”; talking about the turn of the Siberian rivers is incorrect, we're talking about on the use of 5-7%, mainly of the flood flows of the Irtysh and Ob, to sell water “to those regions of Russia, as well as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, that are ready to buy it.” The proposal, according to the Moscow mayor, is justified and important for the country’s economy and for Russia’s political positioning in this region. In support of his proposal, the mayor cited an example from Western practice. According to him, France is considering the issue of transferring part of the flow of the Rhone River, and China used part of the flow of the Black Irtysh, and made this decision independently.
Speaking about the supported idea, the mayor recalled that 25% of the world's fresh water reserves are concentrated in Russia, and “this is a renewable source.” “There is no politics here, I am convinced that this proposal is useful, necessary and will definitely be implemented,” Yuri Luzhkov emphasized.

Flight to Mars, collider, construction of the Palace of the Soviets. It was smooth on paper, but in reality it turned out to be impossible. We recall the most ambitious projects of the USSR, which never came to fruition.

On October 23, 1984, at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, a program for turning the Siberian rivers was approved. This grandiose project of transforming nature was to be one of the largest in human history. However, in the end the project never took place and after a few years work on it was stopped. The river turning project became one of the last grandiose projects in the history of the USSR, of which quite a lot accumulated during its existence. Some of them were image-bearing and were intended to symbolize the triumph of the human mind over nature, while others had some practical benefit and application. But not all of them were eventually implemented. We found out the most ambitious Soviet projects that remained on paper.

Photo: © wikipedia.org

The Palace of the Soviets was to become the main pearl of Stalin's perestroika of Moscow and the main of all Stalin's high-rise buildings. It should have turned out to be a real Tower of Babel. It was assumed that the building of the Palace of Soviets would become the most tall building in the world, surpassing even the famous New York skyscrapers. The height of the palace was supposed to reach almost 500 meters.

To imagine how this building was planned, we must take into account that the project developers expected that in normal weather conditions it would be visible at a distance of several tens of kilometers, and the modern Ostankino TV tower is only 45 meters higher than the planned building. The high-rise building was to be crowned with a huge statue of Lenin.

Initially, the palace was planned to be built on Vorobyovy Gory, but later it was decided to place the main building of Moscow State University there. Especially for the construction of the Palace of the Soviets, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the main pre-revolutionary unfinished construction, was blown up.

Construction of the building began in 1932 and continued until the outbreak of war. During this time, the first construction manager, Mikhailov, was shot. By the beginning of the war, the foundation was completely completed and work began on the main entrance of the building.

However, with the beginning of the war, there was no longer time for image. Construction works were stopped, and later they began to completely dismantle what had already been built. The first stage of the war was unsuccessful, and any resources were used. The constructed part of the building was dismantled for anti-tank hedgehogs for the defense of Moscow and the repair of war-damaged bridges.

The Kremlin gas station on Volkhonka is the only implemented element of the complex project. Photo: © wikipedia.org

After the war, construction was never resumed; the project was purely for image purposes, and spending already limited resources on it in a war-ravaged country was considered inappropriate. Already under Khrushchev at the end of the 50s, the project was returned to again. They planned to rework it into a slightly less pretentious one, but in the end they decided to abandon it completely. Instead of the cyclopean Palace of the Soviets, a swimming pool was built.

The Great Transformation of Nature

Photo: © erazvitie.org

Stalin's plan to plant huge numbers of trees in certain places in order to change the climate in a more favorable direction and increase productivity. The plan was extremely ambitious and designed for a quarter of a century; the initiative belonged to Stalin personally, and therefore it received the informal name “Stalin’s plan.”

At that time, it was an unprecedented plan for the transformation of nature. According to the initiators, it was necessary to plant wide strips of trees along a number of the largest rivers in the USSR. Forest plantations were supposed to reach several thousand kilometers in length and have total area almost 4 million hectares.

The main goal of the plan was to change the climate to a more favorable one. Such large-scale forest protection belts were supposed to prevent the occurrence of hot winds and sandstorms, which had an impact on Negative influence for agriculture. At the same time, artificial reservoirs were built in large quantities to create a more advanced reclamation system.

Work on the state program began in 1949 and was designed for 25 years. Specifically for the implementation of the program, a special department was created - “Agrolesproekt”, which developed and supervised forest planting programs.

It was expected that productivity would increase dramatically once the plan was implemented. Agriculture due to climate improvement. In addition, for the same purpose, various progressive farming methods were simultaneously introduced: fertilizers, selection of especially productive seeds, and the introduction of grass rotation.

However, this ambitious plan was never fully realized. After Stalin's death active work over it began to decline, and at the end of the 50s it was finally curtailed. Khrushchev was a supporter of extensive agriculture and planned to increase productivity through the development of virgin lands, which ultimately led to the opposite results.

In some places, forest belts continued to be planted, but not on the scale envisaged by the original plan, and in the late 80s these activities stopped.

Main Turkmen channel

Photo: © wikipedia.org © RIA Novosti

Another epic construction project of the Stalin era, which remained unfinished. It was supposed to take part of the water from the Amu Darya and send it along the canal to Krasnovodsk. The canal was supposed to revive and make territories in the Karakum and Karakalpakstan favorable for development.

Construction began in 1950 and was scheduled to be completed in 1957. More than half of the 12 thousand people who built the canal were prisoners of the camps. The length of the canal was supposed to reach 1200 kilometers. For comparison: the famous White Sea Canal, the pride of the first five-year plan, had a length of 227 kilometers.

Along the entire length of the canal, a complex system of locks, dams and artificial reservoirs was envisaged, as well as the construction of several hydroelectric power stations. To organize construction, a railway was connected to it and a new town Takhiatash, intended for civilian canal builders.

Huge amounts of money were spent on construction, but in the end it was never completed. Immediately after Stalin's death, construction was temporarily suspended at the suggestion of Lavrentiy Beria, who pointed out that it was too expensive for the budget. Party comrades supported Beria's proposal, and after his overthrow, construction of the canal was resumed, but in a completely different way.

Instead of the already partially built Turkmen Canal “from scratch,” construction began on the Karakum Canal, which followed a more southern route, bypassing Uzbekistan.

OGAS

Photo: © wikipedia.org

The attempt to create a single global computer network that would take over control of the entire Soviet planned economy never achieved its goal. Since the late 50s in the USSR, thanks to the initiatives of the head of the computer center of the Ministry of Defense Kitov and academician Glushkov, attempts were made to interest the Soviet leadership in the project of creating a global computer network that would accurately regulate the processes of a planned economy.

Glushkov managed to interest Kosygin in the project, who gave preliminary approval to the project for automating the management of the Soviet economy. The project of the National Automated System of Accounting and Information Processing (OGAS) provided for the creation of both an industry and a territorial network automated systems management with large computer centers. A huge network would receive data from all Soviet enterprises, immediately analyze it and point out inaccuracies in planning. If it started working, a huge and extensive bureaucratic apparatus would no longer be required.

However, the system was never implemented for three reasons. Firstly, it was extremely expensive, although potentially profitable, because its implementation made it possible to save billions of rubles a year. Secondly, and this was the main problem, it threatened the interests of the State Planning Committee and many organizations subordinate to it, which employed tens of thousands of people who instantly became redundant. Thirdly, the initiators of this reform came at a bad time. Brezhnev and the “inner circle” of the Politburo were extremely negative towards any reforms and innovations and sabotaged even the modest Kosygin reform, let alone the epic-scale implementation of OGAS.

At the same time theoretical works over OGAS continued until the collapse of the USSR and were stopped only in connection with the transition to a market economy.

Manned flight to Mars

Photo: © wikipedia.org © wikipedia.org

The Soviet Union managed to win two significant categories in the space race, launching the world's first artificial satellite and sending the first man into space. But there was still a third nomination: a manned flight to one of the planets. Even before Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, the date for the first manned flight to Mars had already been set - December 1971.

Two groups of designers, Maksimov and Feoktistov, worked independently on this ambitious project.

The projects they developed were called TMK - heavy interplanetary ship. Feoktistov’s project was more complex and larger-scale: a ship with a nuclear reactor was planned to be launched into Martian orbit, it was equipped with sufficient complex system life support. Maksimov’s project was much simpler and did not involve entering Mars orbit.

Since work on the projects began even before the first flight into space, and the duration of this flight exceeded a year, the designers had to improvise, since no one then knew for sure how space would affect humans.

However, this program was never destined to be completed. Having learned that the Americans were concentrating all their efforts on a manned flight to the Moon, in accordance with Khrushchev’s slogan “catch up and overtake,” the Mars program was curtailed in favor of the lunar one, but it was no longer possible to catch up and the Americans managed to get to the Moon first. And in the 70s and 80s, the trend was orbital space stations, not manned flights to other planets, so the Mars program was never resumed.

Collider

Construction of the Acceleration and Storage Complex began in the city of Protvino in 1983. It was planned to build a ring tunnel more than 20 kilometers long at a depth of 20 to 60 meters. At the same time, it was planned to install special halls with equipment and vertical shafts every one and a half kilometers along the entire length of the ring.

Of course, the tunnel had to be equipped with ventilation, lighting, etc. things. Work on the construction of the UNK began in 1983, simultaneously with the creation of the Large Electron-Positron Collider in Europe, while the Soviet collider was stronger in its design capacity.

But if the Europeans completed their tunnel by the end of the 80s, then in the USSR, due to economic difficulties and political ups and downs, there was always a lack of funds for the ambitious project. By the beginning of the 90s, only a small part of the tunnel had been completed (about 3 km, although equipped with everything necessary). In 1994, construction was completely stopped due to lack of funds.

Theoretically, the project could have been completed later, but after the commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, this became pointless.

"Buran"

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Igor Kostin / Alexander Mokletsov © wikipedia.org

The Energia-Buran space program cannot be fully called unrealized, since space transport did make one flight and, according to formal criteria, it took place. But it is impossible to call it fully accomplished. IN best case scenario, the potential of this program was realized by 0.001% of what was planned.

More than a million people involved in the project, one and a half thousand enterprises working on it, a decade and a half of preparation and billions of rubles spent (trillions by today's standards) - clearly expected a little more than one 205-minute flight.

"Buran" was in many ways an analogue of the American "Shuttle" and was created in response to it. The Soviet version has a reusable spaceship there was one significant difference: it was designed for unmanned flights. Takeoff, landing and other flight elements were completely controlled by the onboard automatic system control, while the Americans had to attract a crew for this.

Special runways at the cosmodromes were created specifically for this program, and the world's largest cargo aircraft, the An-225, was developed from scratch to deliver Buran to the cosmodrome.

Work on the program began in 1976, and Buran made its only flight at the end of 1988. Due to changes in the political situation, the collapse of the USSR and a severe economic crisis, the program was curtailed in the early 90s. The only spacecraft that flew into space died at the beginning of the 2000s when the roof collapsed in the hangar where it was collecting dust.

Turn of Siberian rivers

Photo: © wikipedia.org © wikipedia.org

One of the last grandiose projects of the USSR, approved in October 1984. The project involved redirecting the flow of the great Siberian rivers to Asian regions in need of water.

Part of this large-scale project was the construction of a giant Siberia-Central Asia shipping canal, the length of which would exceed 2.5 thousand kilometers, and industrial nuclear explosions were also used for its construction. Another part of the project is turning the Irtysh River back and redirecting part of it through Kazakhstan to Central Asia.

It is difficult to even imagine what consequences the implementation of this project would lead to and what climate change would follow in the future, but it is obvious that this would be the largest project of transforming nature in human history. The main beneficiaries, of course, would be the Central Asian republics.

As a result, the project remained on paper, and in 1986, after a campaign in the press, it was canceled. It's not the best anyway financial position The USSR was aggravated by the “prohibition law”, the war in Afghanistan and the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and only the preliminary cost of the project was estimated at more than 30 billion rubles (1/10 of all budget expenditures for the year) and, of course, would have increased if it had been implemented at practice.

There was a noisy campaign in the press that criticized the project from an environmental point of view. These arguments carried weight against the backdrop of the recent nuclear disaster that frightened society, and it was curtailed, although, most likely, the main reason for its cancellation was that it placed an unbearable burden on the Union budget. After the collapse of the USSR, the project was mentioned several times, but the matter never went beyond words.

Evgeniy Antonyuk

How rivers were turned in the USSR

~~~~~~~~~~~

Nuclear channels

The diversion of the northern rivers, or rather, the transfer of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia, was needed to solve the problem of fresh water shortage in southern regions countries. In particular, it was stated that it was necessary to save the Caspian Sea from shallowing.

The main link in the project of turning the northern rivers to the south was the secret project “Taiga”. Nuclear scientists had to build a canal between the northern rivers Pechora and Kolva using nuclear explosions. It was assumed that if the experiment was successful, many other canals would be built in the USSR in this way. Nuclear scientists were an influential force at that time, and they actually lobbied for this project. Thus, two problems were solved: the creation of a canal and nuclear tests.

In order to dig a canal, it was planned to carry out 250 explosions. Moreover, if the project had been implemented, water contaminated with radiation would flow from Perm to Astrakhan, poisoning everything in its path.

A few days before the explosion, commissioners begin visiting the houses of nearby villages. They tried to warn and reassure citizens. Residents were advised to go outside - this was done in case dilapidated houses began to collapse after a powerful explosion.

On March 23, 1971, an explosion occurred: a huge nuclear mushroom rose into the air. After the explosion, the temperature within a radius of 500 km jumped by almost 15 degrees. Heavy rain fell in many areas.

As it turned out, the experiment was not entirely successful; the charge power was not enough to dig the hole necessary for the channel. In this regard, the power needed to be increased. A new batch of landmines is delivered to the taiga, the destructive power of which is several times greater than the first. However, the Kremlin unexpectedly cancels the project. The country's leaders realized that in the event of a series of powerful nuclear explosions, an international scandal could not be avoided.

If the Taiga project had been fully implemented and 250 explosions had been carried out, the ecology, and possibly the climate of the entire country, would have changed in the most radical way.

Currently, no one lives in the nuclear experiment zone. Frightened residents moved away from this place. The giant radioactive crater was gradually filled with water, forming a lake. An unusually large fish appeared in this lake, which, according to experts, is a consequence of a mutation caused by radiation.

Save the Aral

It is interesting that after this the level of the Caspian Sea began to rise sharply - by 32-40 cm per year - for objective reasons not related to human activity. It would seem that the need to turn the rivers back has disappeared.

However, one of the largest environmental disasters of the 20th century broke out in the USSR. The Aral Sea, the fourth largest lake in the world, is beginning to dry up. This was due to the fact that the waters of the rivers that fed it (Amu Darya and Syr Darya) were actively used to water cotton plantations.

To save the Aral Sea and increase cotton production, the authorities decide to dig a canal 2500 km long and 200 m wide. It was assumed that the canal would cut through the entire country - from Khanty-Mansiysk to the Aral Sea itself. He will transport the waters of the Irtysh and Ob to the dying lake. In addition, they planned to redirect the waters of the Yenisei and Lena to Central Asia.

However, experts noted that in order to drive water from Siberia to the Aral Sea (that is, from the bottom up), a huge amount of energy would be required and this project would bring more losses than profits. In addition, the 200 m wide canals will block the natural migration routes of animals. This will lead to the extinction of reindeer and other animals. In all the rivers of Siberia, the amount of fish will sharply decrease - this threatens small indigenous peoples with famine. The swamps of Western Siberia will begin to dry out. Finally, these initiatives will lead to water shortages in Altai, Kuzbass, Novosibirsk and Omsk. The intellectual and cultural elite of the country opposed this project: a number of scientists, writers, etc.

Aral Sea

Nevertheless, the authorities were determined to implement it. The Ministry of Water Resources, without waiting for the project to be included in the five-year plan, purchased equipment with the allocated money and began work on turning the rivers ahead of schedule.

During this period, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. The economic situation begins to deteriorate, the country has debts unprecedented before. As a result, Gorbachev came to the conclusion that projects such as the reversal of rivers were no longer affordable for the USSR. Then he decided to shut down these initiatives under environmental pretext. It could also bring political benefits: Gorbachev allowed public debate on environmental issues, thus allowing a society that had accumulated irritation with the Soviet regime to let off some steam.

On August 14, 1986, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee decided to postpone the project and limit itself to scientific research on this issue.

Transfer of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Kazakhstan and Central Asia (turn of the Siberian rivers; turn of the northern rivers) - a project to redistribute the river flow of Siberian rivers and direct it to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and, possibly, Turkmenistan. One of the most ambitious engineering and construction projects XX century.

Project goals

The main goal of the project was to direct part of the flow of Siberian rivers (Irtysh, Ob and others) to regions of the country that are in dire need of fresh water. The project was developed by the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Management (Minvodkhoz). At the same time, preparations were being made for a grandiose construction of a system of canals and reservoirs that would allow water from the rivers of the northern part of the Russian Plain to be transferred to the Caspian Sea.

Project goals:

transportation of water to the Kurgan, Chelyabinsk and Omsk regions of Russia for the purpose of irrigation and providing water to small towns;
restoration of the drying Aral Sea;
transportation of fresh water to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for irrigation purposes;
preservation of the extensive cotton growing system in the Central Asian republics;
opening of canal navigation.

Characteristics

More than 160 organizations of the USSR worked on the project for about 20 years, including 48 design and survey and 112 research institutes (including 32 institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences), 32 Union ministries and 9 ministries union republics. 50 volumes of text materials, calculations and applied scientific research and 10 albums of maps and drawings. The development of the project was managed by its official customer - the Ministry of Water Resources. A scheme for the integrated use of incoming water in the Aral Sea region was prepared by the Tashkent institute “Sredaziprovodkhlopok”.

Channel "Siberia-Central Asia"

The Siberia - Central Asia canal was the first stage of the project and represented the construction of a water canal from the Ob through Kazakhstan to the south - to Uzbekistan. The canal was supposed to be navigable.

The length of the canal is 2550 km.
Width - 130-300 m.
Depth - 15 m.
Throughput - 1150 m 3 /s.

The preliminary cost of the project was 32.8 billion rubles, including: on the territory of the RSFSR - 8.3 billion, Kazakhstan - 11.2 billion and Central Asia - 13.3 billion. The benefit from the project was estimated at 7.6 billion rubles of net income annually. The average annual profitability of the channel is 16% (according to calculations by the Siberian Energy Institute of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences).

Anti-Irtysh

Anti-Irtysh is the second stage of the project. It was planned to send water back along the Irtysh, then along the Turgai trough to Kazakhstan, to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya.

It was planned to build a complex of dams and about 10 pumping stations.

For the first time, the project of transferring part of the flow of the Ob and Irtysh to the Aral Sea basin was developed by a graduate of Kyiv University Ya. G. Demchenko (1842-1912) in 1868. He proposed the initial version of the project in his essay “On the Climate of Russia”, when he was in the seventh grade of the 1st Kyiv Gymnasium, and in 1871 he published the book “On the flooding of the Aral-Caspian Lowland to improve the climate of adjacent countries” (the second edition of which was published in 1900).

In 1948, the Russian geographer Academician Obruchev wrote about this possibility to Stalin, but the leader did not pay much attention to the project.

In the 1950s, Kazakh academician Shafik Chokin again raised this issue. Several possible river diversion schemes have been developed by different institutions. In the 1960s, water consumption for irrigation in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan increased sharply, and therefore all-Union meetings were held on this issue in Tashkent, Alma-Ata, Moscow, and Novosibirsk.

In 1968, the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee instructed the State Planning Committee, the USSR Academy of Sciences and other organizations to develop a plan for the redistribution of river flows.

In 1971, the Irtysh-Karaganda irrigation canal, built on the initiative of the Kazakh Scientific Research Institute of Energy, came into operation. This canal can be considered as a completed part of the project to provide water to central Kazakhstan.

In 1976, at the XXV Congress of the CPSU, the final project was selected from four proposed and a decision was made to begin work on the project.

On May 24, 1970, Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 612 “On the prospects for the development of land reclamation, regulation and redistribution of river flow in 1971-1985” was adopted. It declared the priority need to transfer 25 cubic kilometers of water per year by 1985. In 1976 (according to other sources - in 1978), Soyuzgiprovodkhoz was appointed General Designer, and the provision of design activities was included in the “Main Directions for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR for 1976-1980.” »

On November 26, 1985, the Bureau of the Mathematics Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution “On the scientific inconsistency of the methodology for predicting the level of the Caspian Sea and the salinity of the Azov Sea, used by the USSR Ministry of Water Resources in justifying projects for transferring part of the flow of northern rivers to the Volga basin.”

During perestroika, it became clear that the Soviet Union (due to the deepening economic crisis) was not able to finance the project, and on August 14, 1986, at a special meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, it was decided to stop work. Numerous publications in the press of those years also played a role in making this decision, the authors of which spoke out against the project and argued that it was catastrophic from an environmental point of view. A group of opponents of the transfer - representatives of the capital's intelligentsia - organized a campaign to bring to the attention of people who made key decisions (the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Council of Ministers) the facts of gross mistakes made during the development of the entire project documentation Ministry of Water Resources. In particular, negative expert opinions were prepared from five departments of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Academician Pontryagin wrote a personal letter to M. S. Gorbachev criticizing the project.

In 2002, the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, called for the bold idea to be revived

The project documentation prepared by the Ministry of Water Resources contained estimates with significantly underestimated costs. Thus, the cost of implementing the project was estimated at 32-33 billion rubles, while according to experts (in particular, academician A. Aganbegyan), the construction of the canal alone, without the infrastructure supporting it, could not cost less than 100 billion rubles. This “miscalculation” was explained by the narrow departmental interest of the designers.

According to ecologists who specifically studied this project, the implementation of the project will cause the following adverse consequences:

flooding of agricultural and forest lands by reservoirs;
rising groundwater along the entire length of the canal with flooding of nearby settlements and highways;
death of valuable fish species in the river basin Ob, which will lead, in particular, to a disruption of the traditional way of life of the indigenous peoples of the Siberian North;
unpredictable changes in permafrost regime;
climate change, changes in ice cover in the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea;
the formation of swamps and salt marshes on the territory of Kazakhstan and Central Asia along the canal route;
disturbance of the composition of flora and fauna in the territories. through which the channel should pass;
salinization of soils “irrigated” in this way.

According to analysts, there are serious political and environmental risks, which, together with the extreme cost of the project, make it not entirely viable. An assessment of these risks was not included in the feasibility studies of the early 1980s, and the necessary studies have not yet been carried out. According to other experts, the withdrawal of a “tiny share of the flow” of the Ob (the canal project talked about several percent of the total flow of this river) does not in any way threaten the environment Siberian region, but will allow you to drink clean water millions of people in Central Asia and will significantly strengthen geopolitical and economic ties between CIS countries. At the same time, however, there is also no detailed analysis of future profits, economic and geopolitical advantages and risks of implementing such a project.

Prospects

According to experts from the Committee on Water Resources of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan, by 2020 a decrease in available resources is expected surface waters Kazakhstan from 100 km 3 to 70 km 3. If the war ends in Afghanistan, the country will take water from the Amu Darya for its needs. Then, fresh water reserves in Uzbekistan will be halved.

The area of the Aral Sea has decreased several times. Now the territory of the former seabed is occupied by salt marshes; Every year, winds carry millions of tons of salt and sand from there, settling on the territory of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the regions of Russia bordering Kazakhstan.

At a press conference on September 4, 2006 in Astana, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that it was necessary to reconsider the issue of diverting Siberian rivers to Central Asia.

Today, the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, the President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, and the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, are advocating for the implementation of the project.

Current estimates of the project's cost are over $40 billion or more. Some political scientists point out that the project could become a tool for expanding Russia's influence in Central Asia.

In October 2008, Yuri Luzhkov presented his new book, “Water and Peace,” dedicated to the revival of the plan to transfer part of the flow of Siberian rivers to the south.

In November 2008, a presentation of the Ob-Syr Darya-Amu Darya-Caspian Sea dry canal project took place in Uzbekistan. The canal runs along the route: Turgay Valley - crossing the Syr Darya west of Dzhusaly - crossing the Amu Darya in the Takhiatash area - then along Uzboy the canal goes to the port of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea. The estimated depth of the canal is 15 meters, the width is over 100 meters, the design loss of water for filtration and evaporation is no more than 7%. It is also proposed to build a highway parallel to the canal and railway, which together with the canal form a “transport corridor”. Estimated cost construction costs 100-150 billion dollars, construction duration - 15 years, expected average annual profit - 7-10 billion dollars, payback of the project 15-20 years after completion of construction.

How can such beauty suddenly be taken and turned into reverse side? Photo from the official website www.rusgidro.ru

The scope of Russian engineering is wide. One of the striking examples of an idea that seems to an ordinary person The transfer of Siberian rivers from north to south in order to water the arid regions became practically impossible. However, this plan was not implemented due to its technological complexity. And after the breakup Soviet Union he was generally buried, but, as it turned out, not for long. Today, talk about reviving the project is becoming louder.

It all started in 1868, when the Russian-Ukrainian public figure Yakov Demchenko, then still a student, developed a project to transfer part of the flow of the Ob and Irtysh to the Aral Sea basin. In 1871, an enterprising young man even published a book “On the flooding of the Aral-Caspian Lowland to improve the climate of adjacent countries,” but the Imperial Academy of Sciences did not take Demchenko’s work seriously.

The Aral Sea is “drying” along the Irtysh

Almost a century later, the idea of diverting rivers surfaced. Kazakh academician Shafik Chokin returned to this issue. The scientist was concerned about the problem of the gradual drying of the Aral Sea. And his fears were not groundless - the main sources of water in the Aral Sea, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, spread over cotton and rice fields, which took most of the water for themselves. There was a real threat of disappearance of the Aral Sea. In this case, billions of tons of salt powder with a toxic composition could settle over a large area and negatively affect people's lives.

The Kazakh academician was heard; in 1968, the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee instructed the State Planning Committee, the USSR Academy of Sciences and other organizations to develop a plan for the redistribution of river flows. This project, in fact, fit perfectly into the Soviet policy of natural development. Slogans about conquering the latter were among the important ideologies Soviet power. Man, according to the ideas of that time, should have conquered, overthrown and transformed nature. Unfortunately, government actions in this direction were often accompanied by an absolute lack of understanding of environmental problems and were based solely on economic benefits.

Such large-scale projects were typical of the leading powers. And here's an example: at the same time, in 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson signed a law on the construction of the Central Arizona Canal. The main point of the idea was to irrigate arid regions, as in the case of the USSR.

In the States, its implementation began five years later and was completed. Construction was completed in 1994, and today the Central Arizona Canal is the largest and most expensive canal system in the United States. 18 years and $5 billion later, the canal is open in Phoenix. The Colorado River has swollen 330 miles and now flows through the Southern Desert, helping keep local farmers growing cotton, vegetables and citrus fruits in the surrounding areas afloat. This canal truly became the lifeblood of the region's inhabitants.

Academicians tore off the stop valve

In May 1970, that is, two years after the Central Committee gave instructions to develop a transfer plan, Resolution No. 612 “On the prospects for the development of land reclamation, regulation and redistribution of river flow in 1971–1985” was adopted. Began preparatory work– the specialists were faced with the task of transferring 25 cubic meters. km of water annually by 1985.

A year after Resolution No. 612 was adopted, the Irtysh–Karaganda irrigation canal with a length of 458 km came into operation. In part, he solved the problem of reclamation of a number of Kazakhstani lands.

And work began to boil - for almost 20 years, under the leadership of the Ministry of Water Resources, more than 160 Soviet organizations, including 48 design and survey and 112 research institutes (including 32 from the USSR Academy of Sciences) puzzled over how best to “turn” the rivers .

Together with them, 32 union ministries and 9 ministries of union republics worked on the project. The diligence of hundreds of specialists resulted in 50 volumes of textual materials, calculations and applied scientific research, as well as 10 albums of maps and drawings.

But the rivers were not destined to “turn around”. Society did not support such an initiative; devastating articles were published in the press, which spoke of serious environmental consequences.

For example, a magazine fiction And social thought"New World" organized a large expedition to the Aral Sea region in 1988. It included writers, journalists, environmentalists, photographers and documentary filmmakers. After the trip, the participants drafted an official appeal to the government of the country, in which they analyzed the current situation in Central Asia. It also provided recommendations for solving environmental and social problems without such gross interference with nature.

These protest emotions were supported by expert opinions from the Academy of Sciences. Moreover, a group of academicians (the so-called Yanshin Commission) signed a letter to the Central Committee “On the catastrophic consequences of transferring part of the flow of northern rivers” prepared by the outstanding academician, natural scientist and geologist Alexander Yanshin. In 1986, at a special meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, it was decided to stop work. It is believed that it was Yanshin’s commission that had a decisive influence on the abandonment of the project by the USSR leadership.

Rescue from warming

Unhappy Siberian rivers did not remain quiet for long. In 2002, the then mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, remembered this idea and undertook to bring it to life. He got down to business so zealously that in July 2009, during a visit to Astana, he presented a book under the symbolic title “Water and Peace,” in which he openly spoke out in support of the project to transfer part of the Siberian rivers to Central Asia.

“This is not a turn of rivers, but the use of 5–7% of the enormous flow of the Siberian river in order to provide water to 4–5 regions of our state,” the capital’s mayor said then. In his opinion, Russia has always had an interest in this project, because “water has become a commodity and, very importantly, is a renewable resource.”

In the new millennium, the idea of diverting rivers began to sparkle with new colors - at the beginning of the 21st century, the project began to be considered as a means of combating global warming. Today, experts say that the volume of fresh water supplied to the Arctic Ocean by Siberian rivers is growing. There is evidence that the Ob has become 7% more watery over the past 70 years.

Of course, we can be happy for the Ob. But one of the clear consequences of increasing fresh water in the north could be a worsening climate in Europe. As the British weekly New Scientist writes, an increase in the flow of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean will reduce its salinity and ultimately lead to a significant change in the regime of the warm Gulf Stream. Europe is facing serious cold snaps, and redirecting the flow of Siberian rivers somewhere could save it from this. In this regard, the Europeans, not wanting to freeze in winter, joined the Asian countries, in whose souls there is still a glimmer of hope that the Siberian rivers will turn in their direction.

Drought threat

A year after the presentation of Luzhkov’s book - in 2010 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a statement that the book created in Soviet times The reclamation system has degraded, part of it has been destroyed and everything needs to be restored anew. By the way, 2010 turned out to be a difficult and dry year, and the president was concerned about the drought problem. But, judging by the political realities of that time, perhaps Dmitry Anatolyevich was concerned not so much with the energy of the rivers as with Luzhkov himself.

At this time, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, suggested that the Russian leader return to the project of transferring rivers to the south. Thus, Luzhkov now has a serious like-minded person.

“In the future, Dmitry Anatolyevich, this problem may turn out to be very large, necessary to provide drinking water to the entire Central Asian region,” Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the forum of cross-border cooperation between the two countries in Ust-Kamenogorsk.

Medvedev then noted that Russia was ready to discuss options, even including “some previous ideas that at some point were shelved.”

And the “water” issue in the world has been brewing for a long time. For example, a report by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented a couple of years ago, stated that a number of countries will experience a real shortage of drinking water in 10 years. According to the Americans, this will not lead to international conflicts, but “water in common pools will be increasingly used as a lever of influence.” “The likelihood of water being used as a weapon or means of achieving terrorist objectives will also increase,” the report says.

The UN predicted problems associated with water shortages even earlier. In December 2003, the 58th Session of the General Assembly declared 2005–2015 the International Decade of Action “Water for Life”.

In connection with such sentiments, the transfer of water may benefit the Russian authorities for two reasons. The first is, of course, their transfer to regions in need - of course, at a great cost. Secondly, assistance to the Aral Sea will contribute to the entry of Vladimir Putin’s presidency into the annals of world history. So, according to Viktor Brovkin, a specialist in modeling climate processes at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, if Vladimir Putin wanted to respond to the US Mars project with something equally ambitious, the construction of a canal from Siberia to the Aral Sea would be perfect for this .

"Superchannel"

So what is the “Turn of Siberian Rivers” project today? Experts are unanimous - they have already seen all this somewhere. One can recall the construction of a water pipeline from the Great American Lakes to Mexico City or the Chinese project to save the Yellow River, which is drying up in the north, at the expense of the deep southern Yangtze River.

Yuri Luzhkov proposed building a water intake station near Khanty-Mansiysk and extending a 2,500 km canal from it from the confluence of the Ob and Irtysh to the south, to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which flow into the Aral.

It is planned to dig a “super canal” 200 m wide and 16 m deep. The Ob will lose about 27 cubic meters per year. km of water (approximately 6–7%) of its annual flow (its entire discharge is 316 cubic km). The amount of water entering the Aral Sea will exceed more than 50% of the water that previously entered it. In general, the bulk of water will be sent to the Chelyabinsk and Kurgan regions, as well as to Uzbekistan. There are plans to bring the canal to Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. In the future, water intake from the Ob should increase by 10 cubic meters. km - these millions of liters, as Yuri Luzhkov noted, will go to dehydrated Uzbekistan.

It seems that work has already begun, because back in 2004, Soyuzvodoproekt director Igor Zonn, in an interview with the British weekly New Scientist, said that his department was starting to revise previous plans for transferring the flow of Siberian rivers. For this, in particular, materials will have to be collected from more than 300 institutes.

In June 2013, the Ministry of Regional Development of Kazakhstan presented a general development plan for the country, developed jointly with one of the branches of the Kazakh Research and Design Institute of Construction and Architecture JSC (KazNIISA). The authors proposed to turn the course of the Irtysh and direct the waters to the territory of Kazakhstan. Such a sip of water, according to them, will only be beneficial for the Kazakhs. The project document was to enter into legal force on January 1, 2014. Three decades were allotted for implementation.

Believe in nobility Russian authorities For some reason it doesn't work. It catches your eye obvious benefit large-scale project. The economies of Central Asian states, in particular Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, depend exclusively on cotton. They are now the largest consumers of water per capita in the world. Countries themselves have made their situation worse by implementing incompetent and environmentally destructive economies. The Cotton Monopoly is a prime example of this.

The Amu Darya and Syr Darya are strong, full-flowing rivers; together they carry more water than, for example, the royal Nile. But their water does not reach the Aral Sea, part of it goes into the sand, and part into irrigation systems with a length of about 50 thousand km. At the same time, local irrigation systems need repair and modernization; due to their deterioration, up to 60% of the water simply does not reach the fields.

"What we have? In Russia there are uncontrollable floods, and in Central Asia there is an ecological disaster in the Aral Sea; water reserves here will only decrease every year. Can Russia help? Maybe. But we have our own interests. This is not charity - we are talking about benefits for Russia,” said Yuri Luzhkov in 2003 in an interview with Arguments and Facts. But the question is: will Asia be able to afford such a turnaround?

Expert opinions vary. Some shout about dire consequences, others talk about opening horizons.

According to environmentalists, the diversion of Siberian rivers will most likely result in a disaster. Director of the Russian branch of the World Fund wildlife(WWF) Igor Chestin confirmed to Interfax several years ago that in the coming decades central Asia will indeed face an acute shortage of water, but this problem cannot be solved with the help of Siberian rivers. The program director of Greenpeace Russia, Ivan Blokov, shares the same opinion.

Those skeptics again...

Let's try to figure out what consequences may arise for Russia if the project is implemented. According to the head of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Dobretsov, “the turn threatens the Ob River basin with an environmental disaster and socio-economic disaster.”

Ecologists put forward different hypotheses, but here are the main adverse consequences that the new “turn” will cause: agricultural and forest lands will be flooded by reservoirs; groundwater will rise throughout the entire canal and may flood nearby settlements and roads; Valuable fish species in the Ob River basin will die, which will complicate the life of the indigenous peoples of the Siberian North; the permafrost regime will change unpredictably; water salinity will increase Arctic Ocean; the climate and ice cover in the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea will change; the species composition of flora and fauna in the areas through which the canal will pass will be disrupted.

They also doubt the economic benefits of building the canal. For example, according to Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, there is a very small probability that this project will become economically acceptable. According to his calculations, the construction of the main canal will require at least $300 billion. And in general, sectors of intensification of water use will soon develop on the world market: water-saving and water-efficient technologies, as well as methods for ensuring High Quality water in natural objects. And for countries such as Russia and Brazil, which have large reserves of fresh water, it is more profitable not to trade this natural “good.”

But the problem is that, unlike water, money has a different nature and a different power of influence. It is unlikely that the authorities will be afraid to flood a little Russian lands, if the end result promises mountains of gold. In the current realities, this can play into the hands of Russia, which can heroically save Europe from cold winters, at the same time strengthen its influence in Asia and write itself into history. At what cost this will be done is a separate question, but looking back at the Olympics and Crimea, it seems that the Kremlin will not stand behind the price.

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