KAZAKHSTAN-KYRGYZSTAN: Syrdarya flooding risk high in south

ANKARA, 8 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Water levels in Kazakhstan's southern Chardara Reservoir on the Syrdarya River are running dangerously high. Officials estimate it will only be another week before it reaches full capacity.

"The situation around Chardara is very difficult as the level in the reservoir has reached 4.683 billion cu m," Amirkhan Kenchimov, deputy head of the water resources agency at the Kazakh Agriculture Ministry, told IRIN from the capital, Astana on Tuesday.

The Soviet-built reservoir's capacity is 5.2 billion cu m, suggesting that slightly more than 500 million cu m free capacity remains.

The Chardara Reservoir started operating in 1964 and was built for irrigation purposes aimed at controlling the flow of the mighty Syrdarya, one of the major water sources in Central Asia. The reservoir was built to prevent flooding during periods of high water levels and to store water for use during dry periods.

According to the water resources agency, water inflow at Chardara is now some 1,300 cu m per second, while a few days earlier it had been 1,500 cu m per second. However, Kenchimov warned that it could increase further because of heavy rainfall further upstream. Water discharge from Chardara stands at only 650 cu m per second.

"Such high water inflow has been coming into Chardara for more than 10 days," Kenchimov said. "If it continues this way we will fill the reservoir's capacity by 15 February."

The problem of the Chardara Reservoir overflowing is a recurrence of last year, when the water level in the reservoir was running dangerously high and Kazakh authorities had no other choice than to increase water discharge from the reservoir into the Syrdarya, which prompted flooding in southern Kzyl-Orda province. Some 590 sq km were flooded inundating 343 houses and causing the evacuation of more than 2,000.

Kayrat Tarbayev, a spokesman for the Kazakh Emergency Ministry, told IRIN that high water coming into the Chardara Reservoir is due to Kyrgyzstan's excessive discharge of water from the Toktogul reservoir on the Naryn river, a tributary of the Syrdarya.

"According to the [intergovernmental] agreement, the water discharge was to be 600 cu m per second and if they stick to this norm there wouldn't be any problems," he said.

"But due to cold weather in Kyrgyzstan they had to increase energy output at the Toktogul hydroelectric power station and currently water discharge from the reservoir is 740 to 750 cu m per second," Tarbayev added.

However, Kenchimov said that water discharge from Toktogul is even higher, reaching up to 880 cu m per second.

Some reports suggest that energy consumption grew by 30 percent because of a sharp temperature drop in Kyrgyzstan, where electricity is used by many residents for heating, particularly in rural areas.

There have been attempts to solve the problem in the past. In January 2004, officials from Astana and Bishkek signed an agreement on regulating the flow of the Syrdarya. Under the accord, Astana was to provide its southern neighbour with coal and fuel oil in winter, so that Kyrgyzstan would need to produce less hydro-electric power and thus reduce the discharge from Toktogul reservoir.

"The Kyrgyz side does not implement the terms of the agreement while we fully fulfilled our pledges. They again ask for more gas, coal and fuel oil in excess of the amount agreed," Kenchimov said.

Meanwhile, the emergency ministry is taking flood precautions, reinforcing dams and monitoring the Syrdarya River level for 24 hours.

Water management during Soviet times in Central Asia was highly centralised, with Moscow instructing the upstream republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to accumulate water in their reservoirs in winter and to start releasing it at the beginning of the cotton farming season to downstream Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

In return, the three Soviet states provided their upstream neighbours with fuel and natural gas needed for energy during winter. However, after they all became independent in 1991, the interests of upstream and downstream neighbours started to clash and this has led to numerous water and energy disputes.

[ENDS]