Making Rivers Run Backwards

One of the most ambitious engineering projects of XX century has been recently given a chance for revival. In 2008, ex-Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov published a book «Water and Peace» where he reinforces an old Soviet idea of diverting northern rivers to Central Asia.

Large-scale redistribution of water resources from the north to the south of Russia was firstly proposed over 100 years ago. Average annual river flow on the territory of the former Soviet Union is estimated to be over 4700 cubic kilometres. However, the distribution of resource didn’t correspond with the distribution of population, agriculture and industry in USSR. 

Most of the river flow travels though the economically underdeveloped, empty land in the northern and eastern regions of Russia and then «uselessly» empties into the Arctic Ocean, while densely populated south, which also consists of former Soviet Union republics and region’s two biggest cotton-growing nations (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), remains arid.

The Potential Scheme of River Diversion

The first planning work on water redistribution project started back in the 1930s, and was carried out intensively in the 1970s, up until it was abandoned in 1896 by then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev due to environmental concerns. The major rivers such as Pechora, Ob and Irtysh all were supposed to be a part of the Siberian river reversal. The project was not only supposed to solve irrigation problems in Central Asia, but also save the shrinking Aral and Caspian Sea.

Aral Sea

Even though most of the Siberian river reversal project never left the drawing board, one such plan to divert the Pechora and Kama rivers toward the Volga and the Caspian Sea has been attempted in the 1971, a canal to be dug using 250 nuclear explosions. 

The first three explosions, secretly coded as «Taiga», together added up to a total capacity of 45 kT. Nuclear charges were installed at 127 m depth under the ground, but explosion reached the surface anyway. It formed a massive crater, which later was filled with water. Today, there is a 600 m long and 300 m wide «Atomic Lake», surrounded by sandy parapet, still exuding radioactivity. It was later decided that the project would incur greater costs than benefits and soon «nuclear option» was abandoned. 

The Siberian river reversal project met a lot of criticism over it’s course of development and still does today. 

“The Ob River does not have the kind of excess flow that Luzhkov has claimed,” said Aleksey Yablokov, president of the NGO Center for Russian Environmental Policy. 

“Redirecting even five to seven percent of the Ob’s water could lead to terrible, long-lasting changes, including the destruction of fishing, harm to the delicate Arctic, and more.” 

A. Yablokov

Yablokov said the plan, which would could cost $30 billion at a minimum, might change the climate in the Arctic and elsewhere in Russia, destroy many of the Ob’s downstream ecosystems, and ruin thousands of acres of fertile land. He also mentioned about  potential leakage in the canal, which could lead to a massive loss of water before it even reaches it’s destination, turning vast areas of western Siberia into a swamp. This means diverting rivers would be wasteful, unless Central Asia adopt more efficient irrigation techniques.