Kazakstan Ponders Flood Action Plans

Every year, the banks of the Syrdarya, one of Central Asia’s two great rivers, overflow in Kazakstan, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.



Each year, there is a discussion about how to mitigate the consequences of future spring floods.



But this year, the flooding has been much more serious than usual, lending a new urgency to discussions about how to cope with the irregular flow of a river that traverses several countries in the region.



Rising in Kyrgyzstan, the Syrdarya flows through Uzbekistan and Kazakstan before depositing its waters in the Aral Sea.



As of February 25, more than 48 towns and villages had been flooded in the South Kazakstan region. Several thousand homes and eight schools were affected and five bridges were swept away, Nurgali Ashimov, the governor of the region, told a press conference.



Fortunately, there has been only one death so far, though livestock losses run into the hundreds.



Most people have fled the floodplain in time, like Viktor Kapatny, who has been watching the water creep towards his home for days.



“It’s dangerous to stay, so we’re packing up,” he said.



Kapatny’s house is one of about 30 in the area earmarked for permanent evacuation. The authorities have told owners to disassemble their houses and reuse the materials to build homes once they are allocated plots in a safer location.



The sheer length of the river means the potential flood zone in Kazakstan is hard to estimate. The Syrdarya flows 180 kilometres through the South Kazakstan region before crossing into the Kzyl-Orda region further north on its way to the Aral Sea.



The last serious floods to hit Kazakstan occurred in 2005. But older people say the situation this year reminds them of far worse flash floods back in 1969, when many were killed.



This year, the deputy provincial governor of South Kazakstan, Islam Abish, who chairs the regional commission for emergency situations, says the floods could affect about 70,000 hectares, with a population of 15,000 people.



Kazak deputy prime minister Umirzak Shukeev, who met residents of the flood zone in recent days, agreed their plight was worrying.



“This year the situation is very serious. I would like you all to understand this,” he told villagers.



The severity of the floods has been blamed on this winter’s unusually cold and snowy weather, which resulted in thick ice jams in downstream areas of the river, and increased amounts of water let down the river by Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.



Kyrgyzstan can check the water at the Toktogul reservoir, but has an interest in releasing it to run hydroelectric turbines to generate more power in the colder months of the year. This winter’s extreme cold has created extra demand amid a national energy crisis.



In early February, the head of the Kazak Committee for Water Resources, Anatoly Ryabtsev, visited Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to try to persuade the authorities to decrease in the amount of water they let flow down the river.



Kyrgyzstan agreed to reduce the flow from Toktogul in exchange for supplies of coal and fuel oil for its conventional power stations, as well as a pledge from Kazakstan to buy Kyrgyz electricity this summer.



In spite of the agreement, Kazak officials complain that the volumes of water reaching their country have remained more or less the same.



Uzbekistan, meanwhile, promised to help its neighbour by diverting part of the flow from the Syrdarya into the network of canals irrigating the country’s cotton fields. But this solution has been less effective than was hoped, partly because the land surrounding the canals is still partly frozen and absorbs relatively little water at this time of year.



As a result, the Chardarya reservoir just over the border in Kazakstan has continued filling up, presenting an even greater threat than the current flooding.



The reservoir should help contain excess water flows further into Kazakstan, but its volume has now reached about 4.5 billion cubic metres, close to its upper limit of 4.8 billion. If levels continue to rise in the reservoir, the excess will have to be released through the sluicegates.



Water levels in the floodplain could then rise by as much as two metres, threatening a much larger area with immersion, experts say.



The Kazak authorities have set up an emergency response centre to monitor the situation in the affected regions, and have placed army units, civil defence forces and the air force on alert in case the need should arise for mass evacuation.



The government has set aside 500 million tenge, or about four million US dollar, to compensate people for flood damage and 900 million tenge to protect riverside levies and dams.



But more may be needed. The South Kazakstan regional administration said on February 25 said it already needed at least ten billion tenge or 83 million dollars to rebuild houses and infrastructure.



Experts believe the Kazak government must review its options so as to create greater long-term security for communities living close to the Syrdarya.



They recall that back in the Soviet era, there were plans to construct an additional reservoir at Koksaray, also in South Kazakstan, to make it easier to control water levels.



At the time, the leadership of the Kzyl-Orda region rejected the proposal, fearing the new reservoir could result in a shortage of water with which to irrigate their crops in the warmer months.



But this week, the issue of the reservoir at Koksaray will be back on the agenda when the government meets in Astana.



Aliaydar Jaksylykov, deputy head of water inspection at the government agency which looks after the Syrdarya, said a new reservoir was more necessary than ever.



“If Koksaray was built, it could hold three billion cubic metres and we could withstand any flood with no worries,” he said.



“The reservoir would also make us less dependent on Uzbekistan, with which it’s difficult to reach agreement on this issue.”



Other experts are pondering different solutions.



Turmakhan Primkulov, a consultant on natural resources and conservation who has been working on the ecosystem of the Syrdarya basin for years, has his own ideas.



He believes a new canal could be built all the way to the Aral Sea, running parallel to the existing river and diverting much of the river flow.



Primkulov also said the authorities should have kept a closer watch when residential homes were built in the floodplain.



“Settlement of this area has gone on unchecked, even though the experts must have known that the land now being flooded used to form the course of the river, and you shouldn’t build in such places,” he said.



Primkulov alleged that some of the money set aside each year for flood defences had been misappropriated.



“You can launder money with anything that recurs on a regular basis,” he said, referring to the annual nature of the floods. “Say a billion went on managing the consequences of floods – who’s going to calculate what was spent and what on? Some people will definitely be lining their pockets.”



Zinaida Savina is an IWPR contributor in Shymkent.