Syrdarya continues to flood with 2,000 people evacuated

In southern Kazakhstan, the water level in the Chardara reservoir - part of the Syrdarya river system - continues to remain high and flood some areas, with another 700 people evacuated over the past two days, government officials told IRIN, expecting, however, that things may turn to normal soon. "There is still risk of further flooding and this will probably continue, especially with spring approaching and weather already warming up," Marat Dosymbekov, a senior specialist at the Kazakh Agency for Emergency Situations, said from the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty, on Friday. The agency said that some parts of the dyke in Korgansha area of the Syrdarya river in the southern Kzyl-Orda province, had been washed away on Thursday with the village of Aksy facing the threat of flooding. Given that, some 700 people had been evacuated from the area, bringing the total number of people evacuated since the water started to rise in Chardara in late December to 2,079, the report said. Dosymbekov said that the total area flooded was 590 sq km, including 343 houses. Regional emergency bodies coupled with provincial authorities, were working on the ground to minimise the impact of flooding with more than 500 people involved, he added. The authorities cite high water still flowing into the Chardara reservoir as the root cause of the flooding. "The water continues to flow into Chardara at the rate of 1,300 to 1,400 cu m [per second]," Amirkhan Kenchimov, the deputy head of the water resources agency at the Kazakh agriculture ministry, said. He added that the water level in the Soviet-built reservoir was a little less than five billion cu m - dangerously close to its total capacity of 5.2 billion cu m. Given that, the Kazakh water agency had no other choice than to discharge water from the reservoir at the speed of 700 cu m per second, which, coupled with partial freezing in some parts of the river, is said to be resulting in further flooding of low-lying areas along the Syrdarya's banks in Kzyl-Orda province. "It is fraught with serious consequences if the water continues to flow like that," Kenchimov warned, adding, however, that some positive developments were under way. Water management during Soviet times in Central Asia was highly centralised, with Moscow instructing 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. These three were providing 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, which led to numerous cases of water and energy disputes. In an effort to tackle the issue, the deputy prime ministers of four Central Asian countries gathered in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek earlier this week and agreed on Wednesday to reduce the flow of the mighty Syrdarya river to levels that were set by a previous agreement in early January in southern Kazakh city of Chimkent but were not fully implemented. As a result, Kyrgyzstan has already cut the water flow from the reservoirs of its hydro-electric power stations on the Naryn river, a major Syrdarya tributary, to the agreed level. "Now it has been five or six days since they cut the water flow to not more than 500 cu m [per second]," Kenchimov said. "However, it will take 12 days for that water level to reach the Chardara," he explained, adding that the situation also depended on the water level coming from the Kayrakkum reservoir in Tajikistan , showing how water and energy issues were so inter-connected and complicated in the former Soviet Central Asia. The water agency official noted that Tajikistan had decreased the water flow from the Kayrakkum to some 900 cu m per second for the past two days and added that in a further two days they would be able to cut water flow from the Chardara as well, a step which would substantially lower the risk of further flooding in the area. "We do hope that in two days the situation will [begin to] turn to normality and hopefully we will have spare capacity in the reservoir to be ready for spring floods," Kenchimov said. The Chardara reservoir started operating in 1964 and was built for irrigation purposes. It was designed to control the flow of the Syrdarya, preventing flooding during high water times and acting as a water source during dry periods.