A.N. Morozov
THE REASONS FOR WHICH THE ARAL SEA PROBLEM HAS NOT YET BEEN SOLVED
(The paper is done for the kommentarii.ru website, the address of the comment of that issue is http://kommentarii.ru/theme.php?f=3&t=2412, and the address with papers is http://kommentarii.ru/fam.php?f=5&t=23383)

What are the reasons that the Aral Sea problem has not yet been solved? What projects were proposed in the past to save the Aral Sea? Why those projects have not been realized? Do you think it is still possible to save the Aral Sea? How can one restore the former water level?

There are a lot of reasons for which these problems are not solved, and one can try to disentangle the tangle of the problems only having separated the causes from the effects. In many academic papers and mass media publications there is no clear distinction of interdependent but quite separate problems. The problems of interstate water apportionment, inefficiency of water use in the irrigated agriculture, return flows, and the Aral Sea drying out are lumped together. The problems are worth being analyzed both in historical and technical aspects, and then practicable solutions to those will probably be found.
The problem of saving the sea itself should, apparently, be considered in complex with the whole territory of the sea's basin. Then everything will become clear why the sea was sacrificed to the irrigated agriculture development, what was lost at that, what problems arose owing to the development of irrigation and what problems arose owing to the sea degradation, and how come so far little is undertaken to settle those.
Almost everything that has been suggested, I think, is a very zealous struggle with the consequences but not with the causes of this crisis�
Nobody is really interested to solve the sea problem per se, because its economic value is low. I do not know projects of saving the sea itself, with technical justification of the types and volumes of works as well as its cost. There are a lot of various proposals from experts and sympathizers: from cosmetic measures for making a polder system on the coats area (what is mainly being done) to water discharge from all the existing reservoirs of the Aral Sea basin to fill up the sea. There are also proposals to transport water from the Caspian Sea via the Ustyurt plateau to fill the Aral Sea. The project of Siberian river runoff diversion to Central Asia with the main purpose of irrigation development in the region could have an influence, but only indirectly, on the return water inflow to the Aral Sea.
None one of the mentioned ways can constructively solve the problems of the region.
Basically, it is possible to fill any depression on the earth with water; the only question consists in the following: who and for what reason needs that, and who will pay this and at what price?

What changes (climatic, economic, etc.) has the Aral Sea disaster entailed? What problems had the Central Asian countries due to that the Aral Sea had become shallow? Which way the situation in the region will develop in the future?

It is very difficult to estimate the Aral Sea itself both in natural and economic aspects. In any case, to understand those who half a century ago decided the fate of the sea, it is worth comparing the losses due to its degradation with the benefits that were expected then and even were obtained partially. The latter means the irrigated lands which, low efficient as it is, feed the considerable part of the Central Asia's population which has grown for the past years.
From the ecological and climatic standpoint, the influence of the sea is quite questionable:

• at the front of cold-wave intrusion from the north, the sea occupied not more than 7-10 % of the extent of that front, and its role in the climate formation cannot be traced, as far as I know, even by means of the existing mathematic models, since the resolution of these models is too low to catch the influence of an object so negligible in terms of the size;
  
• the area of the saline lands - the sources of air salt transfer - has increased because of drying out of the sea so slightly if one considers the area of the previously existing saline lands in this region and currently existing ones (located much closer to the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains' glaciers the conservation of which from the salt influence the ecologists taking part in the Aral Sea problem solution care for);
  
• former economic value of the sea is one or two fish factories that have ceases their work.
  

As for the challenges that the population at the lower reach had faced to, their difficulty and scale are considerable. But these problems are of a rather economic character, though their causes are associated with irrigation development in the region.
Concerning other problems, those are not related to the drying out of the Aral Sea itself but, on the contrary, the sea shrinkage is related to the water and energetic problems being brewing for long time and having especially become aggravated for the last twenty years. There are a number of problems, and they all significantly threaten the region's stability.
We shall enlist those in brief:

• inter-branch and interstate conflicts in the transboundary river run-off control by means of water reservoirs with hydropower plants that were built during the Soviet Union for the development of irrigated agriculture;
  
• exhaustion of water resources in the basin under the irrigation technologies being applied;
  
• as a result of unreasonable use of water resources, deterioration of their quality;
  
• increasing loss of the landscapes in the river valleys and drying out of the sea.
  

The fate of the sea itself, by its significance for the population of the Central Asian region, is at the bottom of the problems list.
Each of those is specific enough and can be resolved virtually independently, as the need arises and as far as possible:

• Interstate water apportionment issue is a purely technical and economic problem, which requires a team of skillful economists, water engineers, and power engineering specialists.
  
• Water resources efficient use issue is, basically, a domestic problem for each country, which requires knowledgeable agronomists, hydraulic engineers, reclamation experts, agri-economists, and mechanical engineers.
  
• Problems of irrigation water delivery to fields and derivation of return water can be solved relatively easily by means of the existing irrigation and drainage systems control structures.
  
• Protection of the sources from return water pollution is a problem common for all the countries of Central Asia, since each one of those makes its contribution to this negative process.

In your view, what results will be yielded from the summit of the heads of the states-participants of the International Fund for Aral Sea Conservation? What position will each of the interested countries adhere to? Will they be able to come to an agreement? Is it worth to wait for an active participation of Russia in the Aral Sea problem solving?

I have little to do with politics, but I think that a decision should be taken in the more or less nature of a compromise, no matter at which of the summits: certainly the situation is taking a hair-trigger turn. Of course, every party will seek the solution most favourable for itself. The parties may come to an agreement only on parity conditions, and to develop such condition good teams of political economists and engineers who can easily and clearly carry out computations for the persons making decisions (on the cost and consequences of one or another process).
Participation of Russia would, most likely, constructive and mutually beneficial in the assistance in the development of improved irrigation techniques production in Central Asia and not in a challenging premature and extremely costly project of the century, because the problems similar to those arisen in Central Asia are characteristic, to a considerable extent, of almost all the areas of Russia where irrigated agriculture is developed or has prospects.

Under what agreements a regime of reasonable joint water resources use can be formed in Central Asia?

Probably, my opinion is one-sided, as I know only technical issues.
It seems that participation of all the Central Asian states, on the parity conditions, in the construction of large water reservoirs with hydropower plants that are capable and can ensure (maybe with the assistance of the UNO) acceptable counter-regulation of energetic discharges of the major rivers of the region irrespective of what territory and state the reservoirs are on could completely settle the problems of water resources allocation between the countries.
However, the water resources use problem must be solved by each country on its own in the framework of general agreements on the discharge modes, limits to the discharge volume, as well as the quality of the water, which have yet to be worked out. It wouldn't be a bad thing if the International Fund for Aral Sea Conservation (IFASC) would busy itself with this.

Further follows a text which reflects back the author's view on the causes of the Aral Sea crises, with adding a few epigraphs.

	Opposite constructive actions result in a chaos.
	HUBBARD

	In any job, success depends two conditions: 1. true setting of the ultimate goal, 2. and determination of proper means bringing to this goal.
	ARISTOTLE

In Central Asia, water and energetic problems existed for a long time and have become strained in the past twenty years. There are a number of problems, and all of those threaten considerably to the region's stability.
In the order of the discussion, I would like to express my own opinion on the mentioned problems, since much has been said of the problems, both "to the point" and in the form of "bogeyman stories" about water wars; however, as for the prospects of their solution, it is said a bit modestly and absolutely not optimistically. The projects taken for implementation by the IFASC, Interstate Commission on Steady Development (ICSD), etc. Are financed from separate sources by virtually uncoordinated plans, which resulted, to say the least, in some inefficiency of the investments being made and dissipation of those�
The impression is that all the organizations involved in the Aral Sea saving problems do want to solve these problems�forever!
Maybe this is the basic cause of that too little has been realized by these organizations for the twenty years of their operation.
A few tens of institutions and projects, the acronyms of which are too hard to pronounce and expand even being sober and it is practically impossible to understand what every of those does, has been solving the problems of the Aral Sea disaster.
In the meantime, around two billion US dollars has been spent to the investigations and various actions, but the results in the areas where one ought to search for the causes of the disaster are represented by very modest "achievements" which do not exceed hundreds of hectares of irrigated lands on which systems with improved irrigation technologies are built (mainly at the expenses of the farmers themselves). Probably, here we need to search for the reason why the problem is not solved and even is worsening?
Let's try to approach the problems from a technical standpoint so that to understand how the situation is developing and what possible ways out are. At that, in order to make the reasoning step more comprehensible for the layman, we shall go into the history of the problems, considering those from the aspect of just that field (sector) where major water mass is consumed.

	If thinking is destroyed, then the order is destroyed too.
	CONFUCIUS

The technical matter and background of the problems
It "turns out" that 90 % of the Central Asia water resources are consumed in irrigated agriculture!
Evidently, the Aral Sea region crisis is associated with the water resources shortage which happened owing to the irrigation development in the second half of the last century. Therefore, at first, before searching after other ways of water resources saving, one should analyze what happens in this most water-consumable sector.
From 60 to 91 %, subject to the natural conditions of each region, of the water resources destined for irrigated agriculture are wasted (and even to the detriment of the irrigated agriculture as you'll see further).
Do you have any doubt?
Let's try to calculate: efficiency factor (EF) of the irrigation systems range from 0.35 (under mountain and submountain conditions) to 0.55 on the plain; and the efficiency factor of the field (EFf) under the existing irrigation technology is 0.25 to 0.7, respectively, (the first figure is experimentally proved, and the second one is maximum possible in theory). We shall multiply the corresponding values and get the water use ratio in the irrigation systems of 9�40 %!
We'll foresee the reproaches for the fallaciousness like that: "You did not take into consideration that so called water losses are not really losses, and the water is consumed well by the plants, and in general, along with the return flow 120 % of the water resources are used".
Well, let's sort it out together�
We shall mentally follow the water from the mountains to the former Aral Sea and see what effect the so called losses will have, as without understanding this you cannot get, in general, what is happening.
Imperfection of the mountain and submountain irrigation and drainage systems (IDS), having the lowest efficiency in the region, results in the followings: need in the manifold increase of the discharge capacity of the water supply facilities and channels; huge expenditures to machine water lifting; area and local erosion of the soil; formation of landslides; initiation of a pinch-out zones of pressure groundwater; waterlogging and even salinization of the lands; higher nutrient carry-over from the root-layer of the soil; groundwater salinity rise due to relict salts extrusion. These processes necessitate the construction of draining ducts and drainage a few times more powerful than required for perfect systems.
In this zone, all the problems arisen at irrigation, as it were, lay down the foundations of the crisis on lower irrigated areas (we'll revert to this later), but from the economic point of view the ones are interpreted by particular water users only in the form of low crop yield of the crop being cultivated and costs to the machine water lifting and operation of the systems.

IDS in intermountain valleys, being intermediate between mountain systems and plain ones, have usually sufficiently sweet groundwater under the conditions of good water cycle of the groundwater, and therefore losses taken place here cause somewhat lower consequences that in the mountain and submountain. Mostly these consequences consist in waterlogging (and this is in an arid zone!), nutrients carrying over from the soil, pollution of groundwater, and soil erosion. The main problem is diversion (derivation) of the losses from channels and fields.

In IDSs on the plain and deltas the role of losses become apparent mainly in the form of waterlogging and land salinization and necessitate the construction of drainage and water-drain ducts for draining (dewatering) and salinity control. However, one should note that all the above-listed unfavourable occasions typical of mountain, submountain and valley irrigation and drainage systems are present to some extent in the delta area too.
The following legitimate and interesting question arises: how come the abovementioned huge water losses in systems are detrimental, and where do they get to?
The losses on the mountain and submountain irrigated lands barely, at first glance, lose in their volume, and their quality seems not bad, hence they can be well used on the lower lands; nevertheless, if one considers its not absolute but relative quality, then many-times rise in their salinity and concentration of harmful salts is obvious. If the salinity of river water formed in mountains does not exceed 0.2-0.4 g/l, then at the output of mountain valleys (dales) this increases owing to return water up to 0.5-0.6 g/l; and the output of the Ferghana valley, during many year's months this comes to over 1.0 g/l. The similar situation is observed in the valleys of the Chirchik and Angren rivers, Zarafshan and Kashkadarya rivers, as well as along the Amudarya river bed (for your information: the USA rates the river water salinity of 1.0 g/l as a national calamity).
The accounting water drain to the water inlets from irrigated lands (to closed depressions or back to the sources) is much lower that the total size of the losses in channels and on fields (for convenience we shall name it potential return flow - PRF), hence an illusion of beneficial use of the losses takes place. As a matter of fact, those losses are consumed intensively at the followings:

• transit from fields to water inlets, due to evaporation from non-irrigated right-of-ways along the water diversion ducts (beginning from the fields, feeding alkali soils arisen along the fields);
  
• supplying these losses to the groundwater of adjacent non-irrigated lands;
  
• some part of those is used indeed, until a certain time, as feed to the root layer zone of hydromorphic soils; but this inevitably results in waterlogging and salinization with necessitating following washing/leaching and much higher expenditures of means and irrigation water for this in comparison with those required for usual agricultural activity.
  

In water diversion ducts from fields to water inlets, for example, in case of Uzbekistan, which has the most advanced irrigation and drainage systems in Central Asia, this value comes, according to water-balance calculations, to 56 % of PRF and ranges under different natural and economic conditions from 20 to 70 %.
So, improvement of arid zone soil water regime in Central Asia (i.e. irrigation or in a scientific term named as hydrotechnical reclamation) without appropriate means of water distribution over the field, without possibility of setting rates on it, at technologically imperfect facilities of water delivery from the source to the field, at poor control of the system leads to tremendous detrimental water losses and need for carrying out of concomitant and still more costly reclamations.
The cost of concomitant reclamations can be assessed only by special investigations, and according to our assessment this abatement of consequences costs several times higher than, in fact, the irrigation itself.

What can be and should be done?
Please, take note of that we traditionally discuss the issues associated with the consequences historically taken such a turn because of wrong use of water resources, instead of the issues (apparently clear to everyone) on how to use those right. Nevertheless, let us specify it: what were the irrigation and drainage systems actually made for? If to get crop production, then what technical conditions have to be performed to get it? What does the water supply mode through channels comply with? How, by what, and in which mode water should be distributed over every field?
Of late years, these questions are bashfully avoided in "respectable" publications as it stands to reason. And if someone of innocents yet asks that, coryphaei immediately explain to him/her that this issue is not business of researchers, but of peasants who by means of mattocks (called ketmen in Central Asia) and, using their skill, will water anything themselves, when needed, and properly!
And only in rich nations, financed for free by imperialists too well off for one's own good, perfect irrigation technologies are applied (it appears that exclusively out of snobbery!), and IDSs there operate perfectly well.
It has a very long time ago mythicized that perfect irrigation technologies were extremely costly and the operation of those was unbearably burdensome to farmers by their complexity and high cost. And how hard it is for the state (now for the farmer) to operate those - more than words can tell.
At that, the coryphaei bashfully pass over in silence (or do not know, what is even worse!) the fact how much costs the correction of the consequences of the existing non-constructive, to say the least, approaches that have been formed for ages.
For example, for Uzbekistan that has irrigation and drainage systems, not the worst in the Central Asian region, the amount of the annual electric power consumption for the transportation of 40-50 % of the whole used irrigation water (about 30 km3 !!!) comes to 6,900 GWh. In modern prices, it is around 4 cents per one kWh, which amounts to 276 mln. USD; and this is only the cost of electric power without including the cost of equipment maintenance, salary to the maintenance staff, and so forth. At that, it should be reminded that all the said above about water use ratio in the systems and everything will be clear that at the best 70 % of this water waste to losses what brings nothing but damage to the irrigated agriculture. An analysis of water use in the systems of machine water lifting to mountain and submountain lands shows that these losses indeed are even higher, and the irrigation water efficiency is much lower.

	Mistaken people should undergo the only punishment - being forced to study.
	PLATO

	Eternal truths, in spite being eternal, need to be constantly reminded and confirmed.
	GANDHI

Something about irrigation and drainage systems - main water distributors.
In any IDS, several principal functional elements (mutually non-interchangeable) are notable:
1. irrigation water sources;
2. water supply units and conductive network of channels;
3. water distribution means on fields;
4. draining facilities on fields;
5. network of discharge channels;
6. return water purification and demineralization means;
7. water intakes.
All the IDSs have, generally, such functional elements, though each of those has substantial constructive differences. The IDSs serve all the irrigated areas of Central Asia which consumes around 90 % of the water resources of the Aral Sea basin.
A number of mutually complementary methods to improve IDS operation are known.
We shall try to assess very briefly the current state and possibilities for the normalization of the operation of every IDS' functional elements in comparison with the expected effect so that to discuss and select the most efficient efforts and means investment ways to mitigate the Aral Sea crisis and solve the above-listed problems.

Irrigation water sources - Syrdarya and Amudarya rivers, their inflows, and reservoirs on those.
The system of the main large reservoirs in the Syrdarya river basin created to stabilize the operation of major water supply points regardless of water availability in a particular year. The system has the ability of long-term river flow regulation up to a degree of r= 93-95 %, i.e. virtually technical attainable level.
This factor shows that these reservoirs are able to ensure water supply to all consumers uniformly from the long-term aspect at the rate of 93-95 % of the annual flow rate. This means that there is nothing to be constructed or upgraded there, if not to allow for the need for counter-regulation of energetic discharges occurred after the economic relations in the region had been broken.
We are sorry to note that even before the breakdown of the USSR, when the contradictions in the river flow control were not yet interstate, availability of that nearly unique opportunity in no way practically influence on the expediency of water resources use in the irrigated agriculture, since in order to realize those opportunities certain conditions are required, which we are going to talk over below.
Today, when water resources use mode is changing in favour of hydropower generation (reservoirs filling up in summer and discharging mostly in winter), the situation in the reclamation and irrigated agriculture areas at the medium and lower parts of the Syrdarya river basin is getting just disastrous.
The possibilities for real counter-regulation in accordance with the local relief and reservoir structure are available only in Kyrgyzstan (at the Toktogul reservoir, the Kambaraty-1 reservoir after its building is accomplished). Kazakhstan attempts to build a counter-regulating reservoir lower the existing Chardarya one so that to have protection from winter flash floods on the lower reaches and for land irrigation.

In the Amudarya river basin, the ability of flow regulation by the existing reservoirs is much lower ( r= 0.85�88 %), but it is possible to increase it by means of large reservoirs; however, in this basin there are similar hard-to-solve problems with the counter-regulation of energetic discharges from the existing and projected reservoirs with hydropower plants.
The reservoirs on the major Syrdarya and Amudarya rivers inflows are of local significance and operate, almost all of them, in the mode of seasonal regulation for the needs of irrigated agriculture.
Something about the role of hydropower industry. The activities in this sector in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan create recently problems related to water sources and water supply points operation thereat (to the channels systems of the downstream countries).
The hydropower industry in the region have always been like Cinderella, and its main purpose was generation of summer electricity and carrying power demand peak loads (mainly daily demands). According to the world experience, the power ratio of hydropower plants and thermal power plants is considered to be optimum at the rate of about 1:5. At present, this ratio in the Central Asia region (CAR) is close to the optimum, though at the territories of some countries it varies very much.
The integrated power system of Central Asia and Kazakhstan allowed then and allows now quite efficient and mutually beneficial solving the problems of power supply to the CAR states almost over the whole territory of the region. Technical problems of the generation of needed amount of winter electric energy were solved by the Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan thermal power plants.
Out of the total production and consumption of primary fuel and energy resources (oil, natural gas, coal, and hydropower) of the CAR countries hydropower industry nowadays covers n terms of comparable units, according to the Russian analysts' assessment, only roughly 2 % (!!!), and according to our assessment 6 %; still, it is evident that in future it specific value will rise for the following two reasons:

a. owing to exhaustion of natural fuel and energetic resources and rising in the cost of their extraction in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan;

b. owing to increasing number of hydropower plants and their capacities, mainly in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan where there are undeveloped and still good natural possibilities for their construction.

To date, the significance of the whole CAR hydropower industry in the primary fuel and energy resources production does not beyond the scope of the technical accuracy of energy resource accounting, and this suggests that the problem is, at least for now, quite resolvable, one just should, from the economic standpoint, weigh up the following options: either to adjust oneself to the flow mode that has been changed by the hydropower industry, or come to an agreement on a par with the states on the territories of which the major rivers flow is formed and its overregulation is possible.
When it all comes down, all the interstate water relation problems in Central Asia come to the possibility for the counter-regulation of winter water discharges at the outlet from the mountain areas (in mountain countries there is no water resources shortage for vegetation period), and in future will come to the control of their quality.
Counter-regulation issues are complex and costly, but they must be and can be settled. Just a question arises: what effect will it have upon the IDSs of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan (that is to say where the Aral Sea crisis originated and is worsening) if nothing changes in water resources usage ways in the irrigated agriculture?

Water supply units and intake channels systems. However attractive are today the problems of upgrading of the imperfect and outdated ones, we will have to wait for a very long time (or maybe forever) to get results of reclamation after the improvement (reconstruction) of those, since increase of the efficiency factor up to achievable limits (perfect channels systems in developed countries have an efficiency factor rarely exceeding 80 %). And a regrettable thing is that this will practically by no means solve the reclamation problems. The systems with such efficiency that have existed on the new-irrigated lands of Central Asia for several tens of years of the last century are an example for this: that hardly had an effect on the reclamation state of the lands, although total water losses were lower than the average of the region (by just the value of the prevented technical losses in the channels).

Domestic experience and that of developed countries testify that water resource productivity depends mostly on the correct choice of the of field water distribution facility construction (irrigation technique).
Field is a singular workshop for the production of plant cultivation products, and any breach of techniques of this production will bring to the loss of the quantity and quality of the product and may even result in (and already is resulting in!) absolute degradation of the production means itself, that is to say the soil.
Keeping the water-salt regime, required for the plants, in the soil root layer in an arid zone is a difficult and contradictory enough problem. As a historical experience shows this problem cannot be settled without applying perfect irrigation technologies at least during a quite long span. The point is that it is necessary to not merely deliver by any means water to the field soil (we would remind you that the effective/active soil layer for even a lignose rarely exceeds 1 m), but do it in such a way so that to make washing regime therein. That is the average annual (resultant) value of the moisture motion velocity vector in the soil layer has to head downward in order to divert the salts imported along with it, because those cannot be diverted without water. In arid climate, soil feeding by the losses of all categories from channels and on fields, viz. upwards, will sooner or later lead to its salinization.
As far back as in the late 70s of the last century interesting papers were published, in which complex assessment methodology of IDS constructions with perfect irrigation technology was given, and it was shown that such systems are more efficient from the economical point of view (V.E.Raynin, B.I.Koshovetsh, N.F.Bonchkovskiy). However, such project studies, unfortunately, have never been realized (even on paper, not to mention its implementation).
It will be recalled in brief what perfect irrigation technologies (all types of sprinkling, drip and subsoil irrigation) yield the followings:

• water distribution uniformity over the field, and so even development of plants over the whole field;
  
• possible strict normalization of irrigation water, which prevents excessive moisture discharge to the groundwater as well as surface discharge;
  
• total control of water-salt regime of the soil root layer in accordance with the need of the plants;
  
• increasing agricultural crop yield by 20-50 % only due to uniformity and timeliness of irrigation;
  
• save need in irrigation water on the field by 2 to 4 times in comparison with traditional irrigation ways by strips, by furrows, by flooding plots;
  
• allow saving water resources at the head water supply points to the amount of saved water divided by the efficiency factor of the conductive channels systems; for instance, at the channels system's efficiency factor equal to 0.5, every cubic meter of water saved on the field saves 2 m3 in the head of the system;
  
• allow applying the most up-to-date, low costly technologies of crop growing while keeping and increasing soil productivity.
  

It should be noted that multiple natural experiments and field tests skillfully performed in many CAR countries have displayed very high efficiency of using perfect irrigation technologies both at submountain and in highly water-permeable soils of deserts.
The said above allows to consider the irrigation facilities as basic functional elements of the irrigation and drainage systems the decision of which the upshot of a real tangle of problems called the Aral Sea crisis depends upon.

The principal element for water-salt regime control in the soil is field drainage in aggregate with water diversion ducts. Its capacity is to provide for both lowering groundwater level to prevent waterlogging and withdrawal of salts. Since the groundwater and underground water current lines flow at the depths occasionally exceeding the values of the inter-drain space, the drain lines and collectors withdraw the salts which have accumulated in the ground laying under the soils during the previous geological epochs (so called relict salts), except for the salts arriving to the field along with irrigation water. At that, the more losses are in the channels network and on the fields, the more relict salts are carried out to drainage and further (80 %) to water sources.
The researches by B.V.Fyudorov, N.N.Khodjibaev, S.F.Averjyanov, L.M.Rex, A.I.Golovanov, I.P.Aydarov and many other researchers have proved many times that even slight groundwater pressure (natural or formed as a result of performed irrigation) impedes significantly keeping of the soil salt regime. This happens because it becomes very hard, practically impossible, to direct moisture flows from the field surface to drains and collectors to make so called washing irrigation regime for withdrawal of salts.
The existing long-term observations over territorial salt balance of large systems in the Ferghana valley, Golodnaya Steppe, Khorezm, Bukhara and many other regions are witness to that total carrying out of salts is by far exceeds its coming with irrigation water, however salted areas of the effective (root-inhabited) sol layer are still growing.
The fact is that the relict salts reserves are so great that during the existing nearly centennial observations over the salt balance of large irrigation systems they succeeded in detecting only little changes of the groundwater chemical structure at their almost stable salinity level. The relict salts will be quite enough even for our descendants, and their descendants, to carry on a struggle with salinity if we will go on pushing those out of deep horizons by "useful" irrigation water losses.
Who is interested in this issue, he/she can find the beginning of the discussion on this subject in the journal "Pochvovedenie" (Soil science) of year 1936, taken place between B.V.Fyodorov and V.A.Kovda. B.V.Fyodorov proved that one should not confuse the total salts balance of a territory with salts balance in a root layer of soil the thickness of which is only 1.0-1.5 m.
At that, the more salt arrives with irrigation water as well as more water loses on the field and from channels, the higher capacity the drainage hast to have, and the more relict salts it will catch and carry out from the ground laying under the soil, polluting both the sources and water bodies of the final drain. It is like a closed disk which is physically impossible to break without perfect irrigation technology!
Nevertheless, where natural degree of drainage is above a certain level, contrary problems arise caused by the difficulty of moisture retention in the root layer virtually regardless of the granulometric composition and water permeability of the soil-forming rocks. As the land resources in the Central Asia rivers valleys exhaust, irrigated agriculture at the beginning of the past century's last third spread to the upper terraces of the rivers and submountain areas (so called adyry), mostly by means of machine water lifting. An analysis of irrigation water use on such well naturally drained lands shows that at a total specific water consumption exceeding the real requirement by a few times all those systems suffer from water shortage.
If one is to judge by "the highest standards", the consequences of more than fifty-years' attempts to solve land reclamation problems without perfect irrigation technologies, virtually by drainage, are vividly evident in the Aral Sea disaster that is deepening. Today, investment to drainage intensification somewhat stabilizes the situation at the local water-logged grounds, but it does not solve at all the general problem. This is testified by the steady increase of insufficiently watered, waterlogged, and salted irrigation areas.
The problem is that they fail to establish in practice irrigation systems with some optimum drainage parameters with no perfect irrigation technologies. Since if the drainage degree is insufficient, waterlogging and salinization takes place (even in the systems of so called double control at close and fresh groundwater in the zones of good water cycle with groundwater); if the drainage degree is redundant, then it is very difficult to create soil moistening conditions, required for plants, without sustaining additional water losses.

The historically formed return flows (i.e. losses of all categories) diversion systems, which were designed and built so that about 80 % of those flows got back to their sources, do their bit to the development of the Aral Sea crisis. Then, almost all salts withdrawn by drainage from fields on the upper IDS get being mixed with irrigation water to the systems located lower and make the possibility of "washing irrigation regime" execution problematical. This resembles the Sisyphean toil, doesn't in?
A few words concerning the means of purification and demineralization of the return flows from irrigation and drainage systems. This element is not available at all in IDSs of Central Asia because of the high cost of desalination (0.2-2.0 $/m3.).
If to reduce the volume of these flows by several times by applying perfect irrigation technologies (with unavoidable inversely proportional increase of their mineralization) and not to arrange diversion to evaporating depressions, it will be practically impossible to insulate the sources from those flows.
As for the return water intakes, the choice here is quite limited by the relief conditions. All more or less suitable depressions are already filled up to the top, and I don't know anything about other problems solution ways besides those consisting in the attempts currently being implemented to establish water diversion ducts to the Aral Sea that are parallel to the rivers. This action, in my opinion, is an obvious struggle against the consequences but not against the causes of the problem; at that the sea has been selected as a "cesspool" in which any life will scarcely exist when those ducts start their operation.
Future researchers will have to calculate what the cost of inputs is to the elimination of the consequences following side effects of irrigation, because this information is not analyzed and published neither in the IFASC projects nor in mass media.

	One must know that there is no affair the settlement of which would be harder, implementation would be more dangerous, and the success would be more unassured than the replacement of the old orders by new ones.
	MACHIAVELLI

What way out of the impasse is the most constructive after all?
One gains the impression that instead of finding ways out of the situation arisen and not repeating past mistakes some people stand up for drainage construction - "universal panacea", the others for immediate diversion of some part of the Siberian runoffs to the Central Asian region, and yet others call upon for integrated water resources management/control, meanwhile the means by which one can control their use have not yet been well thought out.
Nowadays, it has become a habit to discuss Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) systems that like twins resemble the former "complex development schemes of�". But it doesn't make sense to talk about the integrated water resources management unless we change our attitude towards its proper distribution over the surface of our fields.
Therefore, no matter how important is IWRM, one should not waste time to this: anyway, in the situation emerged the farmers with mattocks will struggle for water taking no heed of the advices on "integrated management".
Who of those engaged in the elimination of the Aral Sea crisis has impartially analyzed what of special schematic elaborations on rational water and land resources use is good or bad, why a lot of what had been prescribed therein has not been executed, and what consequences that has brought to?
Although teams of researchers and planners were involved in those works, who had very high competence level and had prestige with the society, and the works themselves were being accomplished well fully, taking in to account all the aspects which were so insistently recommended to allow for while doing "integrated management", the irrigation technology issues were worked at perfunctorily or were not studied at all. In practice, this situation remains in the "integrated management" introduction programs.
Many researchers (E.I.Pankova, I.P.Aydarov, I.A.Yamnova, A.F.Novikova, N.S.Blagovolin, N.I.Parfenova, N.M.Reshyotkina) pointed out that the adopted of way unreasonable irrigation water use would result in terrible economic and ecologic consequences, because the word "reclamation" itself is interpreted as "improvement", that is correction of natural defects and not creation of new ones.
It must be admitted that in past there was no complex project elaboration prescribed as a matter of principle by the projecting standards of those days (construction standards and regulations SNiP), which allowed assessing all economic and ecologic "swings and roundabouts" when changing for perfect irrigation technology on a regional scale, on a scale of an individual country or at least individual systems.
In every "scheme�" different areas were considered to put to use as well as possibilities to supply water to those areas from sources but not application of various contemporary irrigation technologies with all concomitant consequences. At that, irrigation technique issues "traditionally" were not touched upon, what was a great mistake as setting water supply rate without facilities for water distribution over the field and what is more in combination with perfect drainage is a real way for losing the crop.
At present, taking into consideration economic realities of the CAR states, one ought to work at the issues on where and under what conditions it is the most economically sound to use perfect irrigation technology, as well as think over how to stimulate this from the economic standpoint under the existing social and political conditions. Especially, when reconstruction projects are being worked through for costly systems with machine water lifting to the lands with high drainage degree or high water permeability.

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