Measures are being taken in Kazakhstan to ward off a flood threat to villages from a lake on the border with China.
Strong winds at Lake Alakol cause waves to pound its shores and erode the banks, experts say, bringing the waters closer to inhabited areas. If measures are not taken to shore up the disintegrating banks, erosion could cause the lake to flood settlements, and also holiday camps catering to the summer tourist trade.
Local authorities in eastern Kazakhstan have announced a tender to select a company to carry out the work to keep the waters at a safe distance from villages.
“The results will be known in 10 days,” Temirbek Kasymzhanov, head of East Kazakhstan Region’s Construction Department, told IRIN from the regional capital, Oskemen.
Plans are at an initial stage, Kasymzhanov added. After the winner of the tender is selected, a feasibility study will be conducted, taking into account a range of complex hydrological and ecological factors and determining how many people living on the banks of the lake are at risk.
Work on eroded areas - for which the government has allocated some US$5.5 million - will most likely begin next year.
Pending the feasibility study, action has been taken to deal with some of the worst affected areas around the lake, with boulders put in place to strengthen 229 metres of shore.
Rehabilitation work is also required to shore up banks in settlements bordering the lake in Almaty Region. Some six metres of land is lost to the lake every year in the village of Koktuma, which has a population of 2,500, according to local media reports. A storm swallowed up 20 metres of land in Koktuma in 2006.
Medicinal qualities
The salty waters of the 2,650sqkm Lake Alakol - located some 500km east of the Kazakhstan commercial capital of Almaty near the Zhungarian Gates, marking a passage through the Zhungarian Alatau mountains to China - are said to have medicinal qualities. The lake has in recent years hosted an increasing number of holidaymakers as Kazakhstan seeks to develop its tourist infrastructure.
With the erosion of Alakol’s banks highlighting the delicate nature of the eco-system, environmentalists are calling for caution as tourism development proceeds.
“It’s a unique place,” Mels Eleusizov, head of the Almaty-based Tabigat (Nature) ecological union, a local environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO), told IRIN on 24 September. “Nature is very vulnerable.”
As a rush gets under way to buy up lucrative land around Alakol to build resort facilities, Eleusizov is calling for a measured approach to prevent damage to the eco-system. “All this should be well-thought-out… There should be some good studies. It’s clear you can’t just build everywhere,” he said.
Many of Kazakhstan’s lake resorts are vulnerable to the effects of tourist development. Earlier this month parliamentarians proposed a special programme to protect the Shuchinsk-Burabay resort area, home to 21 lakes in northern Kazakhstan. Its location some 200km from the capital, Astana, makes it a magnet for tourists. Supporters of the plan to draw up a nature conservation programme for the area are calling for improved sewage facilities, an end to coal-burning boilers and more environmental police to prevent damage to the lakes and wetlands.
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