The Town of the XXI Century
Series of reports on ecological situation in Central Asia

THE SOURCE OF LIFE ON THE PLANET

How do we use water?

In 1995 total water consumption in the Republic reached 35,64 cubic kilometers, out of which 8,78 cubic kilometers were used with the help of water recycling systems and 26,86 cubic kilometers or about 25% of the total water resources were used irretrievably.

The main reason for high levels of industrial water consumption is that industrial technology is far from being perfect, which results in high levels of water consumption per unit of output. For example, out of the total amount of water used for watering crop lands only 20-30% are actually used, while the rest of the water is lost during transportation, filtration or evaporation.

The problems of drinking water supply

One of the major problems in the Republic is the problem of providing quality drinking water to the people. The level of water supply for people living in cities and rural areas reaches less than 50% of the necessary amount of consumption in Akmola, Almaty, West-Kazakhstan, Zhezkazgan, Kostanai, Torgai regions. In the majority of the cities and villages the quality of water does not meet national and international standards. In 1995 in Kokshetau region 15,6% (in 1994 - 13,8%) of the samples water taken from city water supply systems did not meet the standards, in Kzyl-Orda region - 11,8% (10,60), Torgai region -9.9% (13,2) and Almaty region - 8,2% (4,1).

The main reasons for development of the water quality problem are associated with the deficit of quality water resources, irrational use of the resources, stable trend of decreasing quality of drinking water sources because of the lack of sanitary protection zones or because of non-fulfillment of the prescribed production activities in these zones.

The reasons for insufficient supply of the people living in rural areas is associated with the lack of appropriate water sources, lack of tube or mine-type wells, large distances of water transportation routes, high electricity consumption and high exploitation costs of the group water supply systems, high depreciation rates of the tubs, high costs of electricity and equipment for raising water from deep underground horizons.

In Kyzyl-Orda region high disease level is associated with the deficit of drinking water and its low-quality content. The people of Kyzyl-Orda region receive about 15 liters of water a day, while the set norm prescribes water consumption of 125 liters per person per day, at the same time 50% of people living in rural areas drink water from decentralized sources or the water car-driven into the villages.

At the group water supply systems, the cleaning systems were not renovated since the time when the water supply systems were put in operation and currently the quality of water does not meet standards of the State Standards article 2874-82 and instructions of the Ministry of health care on leftover chlorine, because the water is processed with chlorine only once at the head pump station and it lacks extra processing, which should be done at the repumping stations. Currently there are no opportunities for completion of this work since it requires a lot of financial resources.

Renovation of water supply systems is not done because it annually requires replacement of 3,6 thousand kilometers of tubes, the total cost of which is more than 17 billion tenge. Construction of new water supply systems has been halted, wells at the pastures are not built and not renovated. Moreover, the lack of work done for renovation of the wells and absence of the appropriate liquidation procedures of the used-up wells results in additional pollution of underground waters. Sanitary service of the Ministry of health care periodically registers high bacterial pollution of drinking water, which serves as a cause for rapid growth of the number of cases of fast development of contagious diseases carried by water fro one region of the Republic to the other ones.

Considering the difficult economic situation in the Republic, it seems that using special individual water cleaning systems, mobile and stationary filters will serve as the most accessible and effective method of water cleaning.

In Almaty a wide variety of water cleaning filters is produced by "Kazmehanobr". Parameters of the filters are quite high, moreover they are adapted to local conditions and are much cheaper than the imported analogies.

However, results of the pilot survey "Ecological consciousness and behavior of the people of Almaty" carried out by the Association of political scientists and sociologists in cooperation with the Ecological Information Agency "Greenwomen" ("Asia - economics and life" newspaper, #11, march 1997) show that only 28% of the people living in the city have water cleaning devices installed in their homes. 64% of the people working for state ecological agencies have those devices. Results of the survey show that there is a difference between the things, which people consider to be important for them and their actual behavior. For example, the majority of the people living in Almaty (78%) consider that the most important things are health, future of their children and economic situation of their families. The first two of the items are directly related to ecology. At the same time citizens of Almaty are not interested in the content of substances and particularly of heavy metals in the water, which they drink. This paradox reflects the lack of information distributed to the people, deep concerns about survival problems, expectations of solution of the problems by government agencies, weakness of the third sector and civil society in Kazakhstan.

The Nation-wide "Clean water" program has been developed, approved by the State Emergencies Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan and sent to all regions of the Republic. Implementation of the program will assist in solving issues related to supplying clean water to the citizens of the Republic and to prevention of development of contagious diseases.

The quantity of fish decreases

In Kazakhstan there are a lot of man-made and natural bodies of water and water streams, which are used for fishing: more than 800 small and large rivers, 1595 lakes and lake systems, 279 water reserves and ponds.

More than 150 types and sub-types of fish live in bodies of water and water streams of the Republic of Kazakhstan with the largest varieties been present in bodies of water and streams of the following river basins: Syrdaria, Ili, Irtish, Ural-Caspian region.

In 1996 the actual amount of fish caught in the bodies of water of the Republic of kazakhstan reached 47241,9 tons of fish or 53% of the limit set at 88710,6 tons of fish.

Decrease in the amount of fish caught is determined by diseases of various fish types caused by the continuing drain of toxic and highly toxic sewage of industrial and agricultural companies, by failures to complete appropriate nature protection activities. Until now not all of the water systems are equipped by special fish protecting devices.

For example, as a result of the chronic polytoxicosis affecting Shardaria water reserve under the influence of the constant drain of agricultural sewage containing leftover pesticides and other toxic substances, reserves of valuable types of fish continue to decrease and they are replaced by low-value short-cycle crucian the catch of which increased from 118 tons (1987) to 1130,5 tons (1994).