WATER RESOURCES QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Аннотация

The article provides information on water-resources quality management in the Republic of Uzbekistan. It also discusses water-quality issues, including environmental requirements for water, as well as ensuring the sustainability of investment in the water- management sector. Improving the quality of water resources cannot be separated from regional water-resources management. The management of irrigation facilities likewise plays a major role in water-resources governance. Reservoir and water-control infrastructure in the basin has been created to meet the needs of the entire basin. Keywords: resources, quality, management, water management, environment, sector, assessment, ecology. For regional-level water-management planning, it is essential to adopt water-allocation agreements that will create a stable foundation for guaranteed water availability. Reliable access to water will underpin the development of national water strategies and secure sustainable investment in the water-management sector, including the assessment of environmental water requirements. Although an allocation framework now exists, it remains unofficial in several key respects (for example, water-quality issues are not considered; formal dispute-resolution mechanisms are absent; and environmental flows are allocated on a residual basis, meaning they are not guaranteed). Consequently, it is uncertain whether the current system would hold up in the event of conflict, a request to change any state’s quota, or even full use of each country’s share. Regional agreement is maintained by a degree of uncertainty at the boundaries of enforcement. This uncertainty over water availability raises the risk of under-investment in the water-management sector and undermines national efforts to improve water-resources governance [1]. To regulate water relations in the basins of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, an Interstate Agreement was signed in Almaty on 18 February 1992 by the Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan entitled “On Cooperation in the Sphere of Joint Management, Use and Protection of Water Resources of Interstate Sources.” This agreement provides the legal basis for allocating water in transboundary watercourses, and the parties are obliged to follow the established rules of interstate water allocation. The principal documents governing the allocation of water resources in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins are: The Nukus Declaration of the Central Asian states and international organizations on the issues of sustainable development of the Aral Sea basin, signed by the five Heads of State of the Central Asian republics on 20 September 1995. The Statement by the Heads of State of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Uzbekistan on the Use of Water and Energy Resources, signed in Bishkek on 6 May 1996. 43 Improving the quality of water resources cannot be separated from regional water- resources management. This is clear for several reasons: The core salt-management strategy should aim to reduce the mobilization of salts from the soil and to identify methods for disposing of the mobilized salts. While reducing salt mobilization can be achieved locally—for example, by improving water-use practices and developing effective drainage systems—strategic salt disposal requires a broader, regional outlook. At present, salts are being disposed of on irrigated lands that lack drainage, in desert depressions whose capacity is nearing exhaustion, and in the Aral Sea itself. Optimizing future salt-disposal strategies will therefore demand a regional perspective. The rise in groundwater levels observed over recent decades is expected to flood low- lying areas and introduce additional saline groundwater into the rivers, further degrading fluvial water quality. Because groundwater moves slowly, the full impact of many changes that have occurred in the past decades has not yet been felt in the rivers and in the low-lying irrigated lands [2-4]. In such a situation, infrastructure located in one country has often proved most advantageous to other countries. Reservoir operations lack a solid financial footing, and responsibility for their management is somewhat ambiguous. One partial solution adopted since the basin countries became independent is for ownership of the infrastructure to rest with the state in which it is located, while operating costs are shared between that state and the relevant basin organization. However, duties are not always clearly apportioned, and this provisional arrangement causes long-term problems. For instance, several upstream dams are considered structurally deficient; if a dam were to fail, the catastrophic flood would seriously affect downstream states. Local ownership and operation of reservoirs also hampers acceptable coordination of regional water demands. Conflicts between irrigation and hydropower needs remain unresolved: peak irrigation demand oc