Syrdarya floods, hundreds evacuated in south

More than 500 people have been evacuated in southern Kazakhstan after the Syrdarya river broke its banks downstream from the Chardara reservoir. Water levels are running dangerously high at the reservoir and further possible flooding was expected, officials warned. "The situation around the Chardara reservoir is currently quite difficult as the water level is 5.045 billion cu m while its total capacity is 5.2 billion," Kayrat Tarbaev, a spokesman for the Kazakh emergency ministry, told IRIN from the Kazakh capital Astana, on Wednesday. Amirkhan Kenchimov, deputy head of the water resources agency at the Kazakh Agriculture Ministry, echoed that view, saying the situation in Chardara was of great concern and if the current flow of water into the reservoir of some 1,500 cu m continued unabated, the Chardara would reach its full capacity by 15 March. According to the water agency, water discharge from the reservoir into the Syrdarya was 800 cu m per second and 560 cu m per second into the Arnasay reservoir, which lies in Uzbek territory and is separated from the Chardara by a dam. The emergency ministry said on Wednesday that overflow from the Chardara and an ice jam impeding the river flow downstream from the dam caused the flooding of some 550 sq km along the banks of the Syrdarya, including several villages, resulting in 560 people having to be evacuated as of Wednesday. The emergency ministry deployed some 2,280 workers on the ground to reinforce river banks and explosives were being used to clear ice jams. Tarbaev warned of possible further flooding in the area given an anticipated rise in water levels with warmer temperatures expected. "We are getting ready for any unexpected developments," he said. Kenchimov endorsed that point, saying that with waters running high in the Syrdarya's tributaries they were expecting the flow of water from Chardara to increase, leaving little option to tackle the problem but to increase water discharge into the Syrdarya, which would mean flooding of the low-lying areas downstream as happened in the same period of 2004. 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.