5 ms·

Blue gold turned into sand: will the waters return to the Aral Sea?

43 points by zeristor 4y ago

zeristor 4y ago
Reading the post on the Scottish island of Gruinard, led to me finding out about the Soviet bio-weapons site of Aralsk 7 which was similarly built on an island for isolation, only the Aral Sea which surrounded the island has since shrunk hugely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  He, didn't work out that well. I was actually surprised that some eastern parts of the sea reflooded in recent years. But considering the short amount of time where the water vanished I doubt there is much hope. I believe the pollution is also considerable, with or without soviet bio weapons.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    The pollution seems like a bigger problem all around.
lordgrenville 4y ago
How feasible is it to restore the whole thing to pre-1960 levels? If they stopped cotton farming and opened up the dams, would the ecosystem naturally heal?
- gedy 4y ago
  From the article it sounds like the countries talk around that by "bringing life back", etc but not stopping the agriculture.
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  What is your timeline? It took a couple of generations for the lake to get in this poor condition. It will likely take at least that long for it to be restored since the area has become more arid. If left totally alone with all natural flows enabled it will eventually fill. That assumes that water is not used for irrigation along the way. If you allow continued irrigation of thirst crops then your recovery is delayed or disabled. The countries that share responsibility for the health of this lake need to work together to design a long-term regional plan. This will probably put a lot of families who depend on agriculture out of work and displace them. In the long term though it will allow fishermen the opportunity to return to an active fishery that supplies healthy food options for local consumption or for export. Solving the issue of accumulated soil contaminants could partly be handled in stages using plant filters along the lake edge as the lake level rises slowly. Managing contaminants in agricultural areas where runoff feeds the lake could also be accomplished in stages by alternating swaths of plants that sequester contaminants with other agricultural crops so that over the region, all the land has a remediating crop at least once a year. Maybe? I don't know. It will take a while no matter how you do it.
ncmncm 4y ago
They could float solar on it to cut the evaporation rate, presuming there is anything to float on. Same for the Great Salt Lake in Utah. As it is they are panicking about the arsenic dust that will be blown over the city from the dry lake bed.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  The governor of Utah has a large farm growing alfalfa. This crop requires large amounts of water, much of which is exported. 82% of the water used in Utah goes to agriculture. So rather than reducing his own water consumption, he's been on TV telling Utahns to "pray for rain" - so his personal crop won't fail. Western water use and water rights are broken. They can't be fixed as long as they are massive welfare projects. The book Cadillac Desert covers the history and politics of why this is so.
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    It reminds me that back in 1983 they had sandbags running down streets directing floodwater into the lake and the lake level was rising so fast that there were crews working 24 hours a day to keep raising the dam so that the interstate highway didn't flood. The Union Pacific Railroad has a track that crosses part of the lake and they raised the track bed several times during that flood episode. I have photos I took of machinery hauling rock and materials from the interstate which was about 25 feet lower than the lake surface at the time. I have wondered why, instead of fighting to hold the lake off of the interstate, didn't they just let it go off across the salt flats while they built an elevated interstate highway section similar to that across Lake Pontchartrain. The level of the lake would've been lower though the shoreline and surface extents of the lake would be much larger. By continuously raising the dam level they forced the water level higher in the populated area and flooded many shoreline attractions. It's only water. Just let it go. It'll wash off.
    - convolvatron 4y ago
      cant let nature get uppity
cracrecry 4y ago
That is a global problem. The US did the same with its rivers, just look at the Colorado. But thanks to that the US can eat, from food produced in places like California. In the future it will be possible to grow food using ten to one hundred times less water with technologies like vertical farming and cellular cultures that grow cotton and other textiles directly. But right now we can't.
- As_You_Wish 4y ago
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+aren%27t+vertical+farms+being+used&atb=v314-1&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+aren%27t+vertical+farms+being+...
narrator 4y ago
This story would be more balanced if they also included pictures of all the land irrigated by draining the Aral Sea. By only showing one side, it makes it look like there are no tradeoffs to refilling it.

43 points by zeristor 4y ago

Reading the post on the Scottish island of Gruinard, led to me finding out about the Soviet bio-weapons site of Aralsk 7 which was similarly built on an island for isolation, only the Aral Sea which surrounded the island has since shrunk hugely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island

raxxorraxor 4y ago
He, didn't work out that well. I was actually surprised that some eastern parts of the sea reflooded in recent years. But considering the short amount of time where the water vanished I doubt there is much hope. I believe the pollution is also considerable, with or without soviet bio weapons.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The pollution seems like a bigger problem all around.

lordgrenville 4y ago

How feasible is it to restore the whole thing to pre-1960 levels? If they stopped cotton farming and opened up the dams, would the ecosystem naturally heal?

gedy 4y ago
From the article it sounds like the countries talk around that by "bringing life back", etc but not stopping the agriculture.
doodlebugging 4y ago
What is your timeline? It took a couple of generations for the lake to get in this poor condition. It will likely take at least that long for it to be restored since the area has become more arid. If left totally alone with all natural flows enabled it will eventually fill. That assumes that water is not used for irrigation along the way. If you allow continued irrigation of thirst crops then your recovery is delayed or disabled. The countries that share responsibility for the health of this lake need to work together to design a long-term regional plan. This will probably put a lot of families who depend on agriculture out of work and displace them. In the long term though it will allow fishermen the opportunity to return to an active fishery that supplies healthy food options for local consumption or for export. Solving the issue of accumulated soil contaminants could partly be handled in stages using plant filters along the lake edge as the lake level rises slowly. Managing contaminants in agricultural areas where runoff feeds the lake could also be accomplished in stages by alternating swaths of plants that sequester contaminants with other agricultural crops so that over the region, all the land has a remediating crop at least once a year. Maybe? I don't know. It will take a while no matter how you do it.

ncmncm 4y ago

They could float solar on it to cut the evaporation rate, presuming there is anything to float on. Same for the Great Salt Lake in Utah. As it is they are panicking about the arsenic dust that will be blown over the city from the dry lake bed.

Tangurena2 4y ago
The governor of Utah has a large farm growing alfalfa. This crop requires large amounts of water, much of which is exported. 82% of the water used in Utah goes to agriculture. So rather than reducing his own water consumption, he's been on TV telling Utahns to "pray for rain" - so his personal crop won't fail. Western water use and water rights are broken. They can't be fixed as long as they are massive welfare projects. The book Cadillac Desert covers the history and politics of why this is so.
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  It reminds me that back in 1983 they had sandbags running down streets directing floodwater into the lake and the lake level was rising so fast that there were crews working 24 hours a day to keep raising the dam so that the interstate highway didn't flood. The Union Pacific Railroad has a track that crosses part of the lake and they raised the track bed several times during that flood episode. I have photos I took of machinery hauling rock and materials from the interstate which was about 25 feet lower than the lake surface at the time. I have wondered why, instead of fighting to hold the lake off of the interstate, didn't they just let it go off across the salt flats while they built an elevated interstate highway section similar to that across Lake Pontchartrain. The level of the lake would've been lower though the shoreline and surface extents of the lake would be much larger. By continuously raising the dam level they forced the water level higher in the populated area and flooded many shoreline attractions. It's only water. Just let it go. It'll wash off.
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    cant let nature get uppity

cracrecry 4y ago

That is a global problem. The US did the same with its rivers, just look at the Colorado. But thanks to that the US can eat, from food produced in places like California. In the future it will be possible to grow food using ten to one hundred times less water with technologies like vertical farming and cellular cultures that grow cotton and other textiles directly. But right now we can't.

As_You_Wish 4y ago
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+aren%27t+vertical+farms+being+used&atb=v314-1&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+aren%27t+vertical+farms+being+...

narrator 4y ago

This story would be more balanced if they also included pictures of all the land irrigated by draining the Aral Sea. By only showing one side, it makes it look like there are no tradeoffs to refilling it.