The Idea Is Intriguing, But …

V. Perevedentsev. The Idea Is Intriguing, But … March 10, 1982

Economist V. Perevedentsev challenges the diversion project on its own terms, arguing that planners have outrun the science and cannot demonstrate economic viability. He contends that modernizing existing Central Asian irrigation systems, regulating river flow, and introducing water pricing would deliver comparable results at a fraction of the cost.

Original Source: Literaturnaia gazeta, 1982, no. 10 (10 March)

The idea of linking Siberian waters with Central Asia’s land and sun emerged more than 100 years ago. An alluring idea, undoubtedly, but from the idea to embodiment is a tremendous distance, and this distance needs to be traveled in very wellconsidered fashion. The Twenty-fifth CPSU Congress recorded in its decisions: ‘*To carry out scientific research and on this basis draw up planning studies connected with the problem of diverting part of the flow of northern and Siberian rivers to Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Volga River basin.’’ Perfectly clearly put: the planning studies should be based on scientific research.

I have participated on many occasions in recent years in scientific conferences on questions of the diversion of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia. The most common feature of these conferences has been the ‘“‘confrontation’’ between the planners of the Giprovodkhoz and workers of the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources on the one hand and scientific workers of other departments on the other. The planners have accused science of complicating the problem, throwing wrenches in the works and impeding the construction and charged them with the fact that the country is incurring tremendous losses because the canal is not being built, that every year the postponement of the construction costs the state tens of billions of rubles in unobtained products and so forth. The scientific workers, for their part, claim that the plans for the canal (there have been many variants) lack a truly scientific foundation, that many questions of fundamental importance are vague, that serious hydrological, ecological and other problems arise and that the ‘‘project of the century’ lacks economic substantiation.

Research specialists ask the planners serious questions.

Primarily, what proportion of the water taken from the Ob will reach the areas where it will be used? To what extent will this water be mineralized at the end of a trunk canal more than 2,000 kilometers long—in the lower reaches of the Syr Daria and Amu Daria? How will the flora and fauna of the cold Siberian water behave in the hot desert climate? What will be the consequences for Siberia of the transfer of the water? What will the final cost of the canal be and when will it be recouped? And so on and so forth.

We sometimes hear the following answers: there will be virtually no loss of water en route (“‘well, some 5%, 10% at the most’’); virtually as much water will arrive as is diverted from the Ob; expenditure on the canal will be recouped very quickly; and so forth. And the answers are given, furthermore, in the most general form, as a rule. But it is not laymen who are putting the questions. Hydrologists and hydrogeologists are inquiring about the water losses, hydrochemists about the water mineralization and economists about the canal’s recoupability. And it is specialists who are not satisfied with the answers they obtain.

This is because, I believe, ‘‘the cart was put before the horse’’: planning was embarked upon before the essential scientific data for this were obtained. For many individual reasons we now inevitably come across general questions for which there are either no answers at all or which are very approximate. It is becoming more apparent than ever that the decision concerning the transfer must be shorn of any smack of ‘‘departmentalism.”’

I can entirely understand the perplexity of the hydrologists and hydrochemists. Why, say, in canal more than 2,000 kilometers long will the losses of water constitute a lesser proportion than in the comparatively short canals of Central Asia? The geologists say that hundreds of kilometers of the canal’s path lie over places with very severe water absorption, where it will be necessary, as a consequence of this, to concretize the bed. Yet an earth canal is proposed for the entire length. And evaporation will be great. But let us turn to economics. I hear constantly from the planners that the canal will be very profitable economically and that it will recoup expenditure rapidly. But why, I repeat, have I never heard any serious economic evidence? Following an all-union conference in Moscow, the planners invited a group of its participants to the ‘‘Soiuzgiprovodkhoz’’ Institute, promising to convince everyone conclusively and irreversibly of the canal’s great economic advantageousness. A big table with data on corn and soybean production in the USSR and the United States was hung on the wall. And it was said that much corn could be obtained in Central Asia, but that it could not be cultivated in Siberia; much meat and milk could be obtained on the basis of corn. Those were all the arguments there were. No data on the correlation of expenditure and results—and this alone can be evidence of the economic efficiency of any given project—werc provided.

At a meeting in Novosibirsk in the fall of 1979 Academician A. G. Aganbegyan said plainly that the canal had no economic substantiation. As far as I,can judge, it still has none.

‘‘Prove the canal’s inefficiency,’’ the planners sometimes say to doubters. I would mention that the burden of proof should lie with those who propose, and not the other way about. But inasmuch as they decline this, we must tackle some simple economic computations.

The recoupability on irrigation systems is 5-6 years in the Central Asian republics (at best). Indeed, at best. Considerably longer in other cases. In the planned canal from the Ob to the Amu Daria we must add to the outlays which are usual in these cases capital and current expenditure on the trunk canal. How much will this cost? There are various figures. The Giprovodkhoz suggested some time ago 10 billion rubles; Siberian economists no less than 20 billion rubles (inasmuch as, inter alia, the canal bed will, nonetheless, have to be concretized over a large distance); and an expert commission of the USSR Gosplan determined capital investment in the canal of the order of 14 billion rubles. We will dwell on this middle figure. How much water will reach the fields?

After the regulating Tegiz Reservoir the trunk canal is designed for a discharge of 17 cubic kilometers of water a year. In the technically accomplished irrigation systems of Central Asia 75-80% of the water taken from the source reaches the field. Let us suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that the irrigable fields obtain 14 billion cubic meters of water a year. Then for the canal alone it will be necessary to spend 1 ruble per cubic meter of water.

I have heard many times that expenditure on the diversion of Siberian waters to Central Asia will be recouped in 10 years. Is this possible?

Let us suppose that only 10,000 cubic meters of water will be used per hectare of sown area (it is now considerably more). In other words, with the capital investments in the canal being recouped in 10 years it would be necessary to discharge per hectare of sown area annually water at a cost of 1,000 rubles, that is, to obtain, as a minimum, 1,000 rubles of net product per hectare. From 1,000 cubic meters of water, 100 rubles of net product. Yet the cotton sovkhozes of Andizhan Oblast (and cotton is more profitable than fodder crops) obtain only 8-50 rubles of net income per 1,000 cubic meters of water. Even with an income of 50 rubles per 1,000 cubic meters of irrigation water (which is unlikely) expenditure on the canal (only on the canal!) would only be recouped in 20 years. And we are not yet taking into consideration considerable current expenditure on operation of the canal.

Obviously, a minimum of 5 years to be added to the recovery of expenditure on a local irrigation system and the preparation of the land for irrigation. And, in addition, we need to take into consideration the long freezing of the capital investments of the first years of the canal’s construction.

Given the inadequacy of the data, it is impossible to say precisely how long it would take for the diversion of water to Central Asia to pay for itself.

However, it may be accurately asserted that it would not pay for itself in 10 years. It is highly doubtful that it would pay for itself in 30 years even. I have heard of the great economic advantageousness of the canal on many occasions from Igor Andreevich Gerardi, chief engineer of the project. I hope that the project has a chief economist also. And it is his observations concerning the economic aspect of this project that I would like to hear. Construction of Ob—Amu Daria canal with the indicators available today and at the present level of production would lead to an appreciable decline in the efficiency of capital investments in agriculture and cause the country huge economic losses. None of this, of course, by any means indicates that such a canal will never be built. The progress of excavating equipment, increased labor productivity in irrigation, the increased value of water, the growth of harvests, the possible discovery of better versions of the canal and so forth—all these could, in time, considerably change the economic indicators of the transfer of Siberian waters to Central Asia. I believe that this project should be regarded not as something in itself but as part of a goal-oriented comprehensive food program and as a hypothetical version of the accomplishment of certain tasks. I believe that this version is uncompetitive for the present: there are more profitable ways of achieving the same results. I heard of — some of them also during discussion of the canal project. Thus a sharp increase in grain production is perfectly possible with the help of the irrigation of vast areas in West Siberia and North Kazakhstan, where the harvests are now small and unstable. Irrigation here should be supplementary to atmospheric irrigation and, for this reason, inexpensive. The soil in Siberia and Kazakhstan is severly lacking in phosphorus. Fertilization of the fields and irrigation could provide for very high and stable cereals’ harvests here. Other variants are possible also.

However, can Central Asia develop without the waters of the Ob? It is said that all sources of water will have been used up there by 1990 and that the further extension of irrigable land is impossible without long-range assistance. Yes, if water is used as it has been hitherto. It will soon be exhausted. But can we irrigate in this way in our day?

In many of the old irrigation systems less than half of the water taken from a river or reservoir reaches the field. Frequently some 1.5 times more water is discharged onto the field than is necessary. There is no interyear regulation of the flow in the rivers. Virtually no use is made of ground waters. And so on and so forth. Some specialists claim that the rational use of local Central Asian waters would make it possible to no less than double the irrigated areas.

In the summer of 1980 I visited an experimental area of new irrigation methods of the Tadzhik branch of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Hydroreclamation south of Dushanbe. I was shown many remarkable methods by which land can be irrigated on plains, on steep inclines, on heavy clay soil and on light sandy soil and how it is possible to greatly economize on water, furthermore, and increase harvests and labor productivity. But where have these methods been introduced? On one kolkhoz, it turned out, over an area of 10 hectares. And this is all.

Nor is the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources displaying much interest in the modernization of the old irrigation systems, in which water is used extremely wastefully. It is evidently more profitable to irrigate new.land than to undertake modernization. Yes, this modernization really is very costly. Nonetheless, it will provide water at approximately half the cost of that transferred from Siberia.

A huge reserve of Central Asia is interyear regulation of the flow. It will be possible in the Amu Daria basin after the construction of the Rogunskaia GES. But the preceding Nurek GES was under construction for two decades, and, to judge by the start, the Rogunskaia will take just as long. There is sense in accelerating hydropower construction on the rivers of Central Asia. Interyear regulation of the flow will enable us to increase it by 20-25 cubic kilometers in dry years, that is, provide the fields with far more moisture than could be brought by the first stage of a canal from the Ob.

And, of course, significant results would be produced by such an economical method as the introduction of a charge for the water. It is currently free for the kolkhozes and sovkhozes. But this is what they have done in Kirgizia: the state has begun to allocate day-to-day resources for irrigation not to the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources but to the kolkhozes and sovkhozes, and these have transferred this money to establishments of the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources as they are supplied with water. But if the farm fails to keep within the set limits, it then pays with its own money. The amounts are small, but this measure also has produced a perceptible saving of irrigation water.

It is striking, but a fact that the biggest cotton harvests are obtained in years witha water shortage. And a survey of many Barren Steppe sovkhozes showed this. On sovkhozes where the water supply was within the limits of 0.9-] of the norm the cotton yield constituted 22.5 quintals per hectare, the gross product per hectare of sown area was assessed at 843 rubles, income per 1,000 cubic meters of water was 94 rubles, and 3,900 cubic meters of water were used per ton of raw cotton. But on sovkhozes where the water supply was in excess of 1.1 of the norm the corresponding figures were 18.1 quintals per hectare, 757 rubles and 69 rubles, and 6,000 cubic meters of water.

Overwatering often causes soil salinization, and this requires its leaching. As we can see, the possibilities of the further development of the economy of Central Asia on the basis of its own water are still considerable. And, in any event, they should be used before the Siberian rivers get here.

I do not see sufficient grounds for rushing the diversion of Siberian waters to Central Asia. As is known, the Twenty-sixth CPSU Congress planned ‘‘to continue scientific and planning studies on the diversion of part of the water of Siberian rivers to Central Asia and Kazakhstan.’’ To continue!

One-sided pressure is dangerous for the cause. What is needed is not the confrontation of the scientists and planners but their amicable, joint work, which will enable us to find the optimum solutions.

Source: Martha B. Olcott with Lubomyr Hajda and Anthony Olcott, eds., Soviet Multinational State: readings and documents (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1990)