NEWSFOCUS KAZAKHSTAN UZBEKISTAN Lake Sarykamish A m Dashoguz u D Collector a ry a TURKMENISTAN r en Collecto Great Turkm Karashor Depression, Future Site of Caspian Golden Age Lake Sea Ashgabat Merv IRAN A New Great Lake—or Dead Sea? Turkmenistan intends to create a huge lake in the desert by filling a natural depression with drainage water. on June 3, 2008 Critics say it’s a bad idea that could even spark a war ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN—Bone-dry and many problems,” says Paltamed Esenov, lake will become an artificial Dead Sea. as forbidding as California’s Death Valley, the director of the National Institute for “Trying to find value in this lake may be windswept, 120-kilometer-long Karashor Deserts, Flora, and Fauna in Ashgabat. like trying to put lipstick on a pig,” says Depression—a natural bowl speckled with Turkmen officials predict that the project Michael Glantz, director of the U.S. the ash-gray, mica-laden sand that gives the will reclaim 450,000 hectares of water- National Center for Atmospheric Research’s www.sciencemag.org Karakum, or “Black Sand,” Desert its logged agricultural fields and create a habi- Center for Capacity Building in Boulder, name—might seem the last place in the world tat for migratory birds and an inland fishery. Colorado. “A bad idea, even for the best of to put a lake. But on a fine day in Next month, Turkmen engi- intentions, is still a bad idea.” Some experts October 2000, some 450 kilome- neers say they will complete the believe that runoff will be insufficient to fill ters south of Karashor, President mammoth effort’s first phase: the lake, as the drainage water will evapo- Saparmurat Niyazov leaned Online excavation of the two “collector” rate or seep into the desert through unlined sciencemag.org against a spade and breached a canals, each hundreds of kilome- feeder canals. Downloaded from few-meters-wide earthen dam. More on this ters long. Water apparently has That prospect raises fears that the lake story in Science’s Laborers took over, and soon Podcast already begun trickling into could trigger a water war. Some observers water was gushing into the initial Karashor. “We are carrying out a worry that to prevent Golden Age Lake from segment of a canal intended to fill unique, pioneering project,” says running dry and to dilute tainted water, Turk- Karashor to its rim. Golden Age Lake, the late a senior engineer at the Turkmen State menistan might top it off with fresh water president said, would become “the symbol of Water Research, Production, and Design from the Amu Darya, a river on the border revival of the Turkmen land,” covering 3500 Institute in Ashgabat, which leads construc- with Uzbekistan to the north. Uzbeks rely on square kilometers—nearly the area of Utah’s tion of Golden Age Lake. “Everything we the river for irrigation, and their leaders have Great Salt Lake. are doing is aimed at increasing agricultural said they would not tolerate a reduced share With that gesture, Niyazov—known as productivity,” says the engineer, who of the Amu Darya. “The lake project has Turkmenbashi, or “Father of the Turkmen Peo- requested anonymity after agreeing to be incredible geopolitical implications,” says ple”—launched one of the most grandiose interviewed without permission from Turk- Johan Gely, who works on water issues in water projects ever undertaken. According to menistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. central Asia for the Swiss Agency for Devel- the plan, two canals that bisect the country will But Golden Age Lake has unleashed a opment and Cooperation. The senior water funnel runoff from heavily irrigated cotton torrent of criticism as well. “There’s no engineer insists such fears are unfounded: fields into Karashor. The $6 billion project is sense in this,” says Timur Berkeliev, a geo- “Every drop of the Amu Darya is valuable, designed to drain swamps and combat the chemist who coordinates the Worldwide and nobody is planning to use this water for buildup of salt and other minerals that have Fund for Nature’s Econet project in Turk- Golden Age Lake,” he says. degraded three-quarters of Turkmenistan’s menistan. He and others are skeptical of Some see a window of opportunity to arable land and eroded renowned archaeo- plans to purify the runoff, laden with pesti- coax Turkmenistan to reconsider. Niyazov logical monuments. “The lake will solve cides and fertilizers, and contend that the died in December 2006, and his successor, CREDIT (INSET): JACQUES DESCLOITRES, MODIS LAND RAPID RESPONSE TEAM, NASA/GSFC 1002 23 MAY 2008 VOL 320 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS NEWSFOCUS Making a lake. Two cross-country canals will funnel primarily sodium sulfate—to the surface by menistan’s irrigation runoff into Karashor, drainage water from Turkmenistan’s heartland into capillary action. With evaporation, the brine near the border with Uzbekistan. Niyazov the Karashor Depression. crystallizes into mirabilite, a corrosive min- dusted off a Soviet rough blueprint for an eral that ruins oases and poisons fields. artificial lake, Glantz and others assert, as a Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, has not yet “Several kilometers to the left and right of strongman’s way of showing dominion over spoken publicly about the project. Foreign the canal is a death zone,” says a Turkmen nature. “Only a powerful state can build leaders have remained mum as well, perhaps government scientist who asked to remain such a gigantic thing,” Niyazov said in in deference to Turkmenistan’s growing clout anonymous to keep his job. “If you step in 2003. Turkmenistan’s leader from the coun- as owner of the world’s fifth largest natural gas the extremely salty water, your shoes are try’s independence in 1991 until his death, reserves. In the meantime, Berdimuhamedov destroyed within a week,” adds a Western Niyazov was anointed by parliament as has promoted a gradual opening of the iso- technician in Ashgabat who has visited the Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great and, in lated country. “The leadership is now sensitive construction site of Golden Age Lake. 1999, made president for life. Golden Age to world opinion,” says Berkeliev. There might The Karakum Canal is not the only vil- Lake was not put to public consultation or be one last chance, he says, to persuade lain in the salinization saga. In the mid- debate. “It was almost impossible to object authorities to convene an international scien- 1970s, Soviet engineers constructed before,” says Berkeliev. In 2004, after tific review before irreversible steps are taken drainage canals to discharge runoff into the merely asking whether the project included to fill the lake. “This is the right time to do desert. Dumping, coupled with overirriga- ecological expertise, the country’s sole something,” he says. tion of farm fields, has saturated the ground homegrown environmental group, the and brought salt to the surface across the Katena Ecological Club, was shut down. Back in the USSR watershed. The water table is so high in the One potential beneficiary of the lake Centuries ago, central Asians learned how to Dashoguz region, researchers say, that project is the region’s archaeological treas- make the most of the region’s scarce water dozens of saline lakes have formed from ures. “Water and salt are the main enemies with networks of underground canals that water burbling up from the ground. “About of archaeological sites,” says the govern- conserved water for irrigation and drinking. 80% of arable land is damaged to different ment scientist, who says that farmland and on June 3, 2008 “The tragic irony is that this region was home degrees,” says Berkeliev. Many Turkmen runoff have begun to encroach on what to one of the largest and most efficient irriga- farmers soak fallow fields in winter, might be Turkmenistan’s most famous tion systems in history, until the Mongol inva- wrongly believing that as fresh water seeps site, the Bronze Age ruins of Gonur Depe sion destroyed much of the network,” says into the soil, it takes salt with it. “But this has (Science, 3 August 2007, p. 586). Saliniza- Peter Sinnott, director of the Caspian Project the opposite effect,” concentrating tion has already taken a heavy toll at one at Columbia University. mirabilite, Berkeliev says: “This is a very ancient monument, Little Kyz Kala in the Josef Stalin managed to outdo the Mon- complex problem, and the level of study is medieval city of Merv, which has deterio- gols. During the Cold War, when central not adequate.” rated especially rapidly in recent decades. Asia was part of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s That hasn’t stopped Turkmen authorities The water table rose, soaking the foundations www.sciencemag.org water managers cooked up a notorious from forging ahead with a solution: the res- of the 1400-year-old brick fortress with salt fiasco. In the 1950s, they began to divert urrection of a 1970s idea to divert Turk- and weakening them (see photos, below). massive amounts of water from the Syr With archaeologist Tim Williams Darya into a network of canals to irrigate and colleagues at University Col- cotton fields in Uzbekistan. The Syr Darya lege London, Sébastien Moriset’s is one of two main sources of water for the team at the International Centre landlocked Aral Sea; the river’s reduced for Earth Construction of the Downloaded from flow resulted in the Aral’s shrinkage to less Grenoble School of Architec- than a quarter of its original surface area. ture in France has helped Turk- Soviet planners were pushing cotton in men conservators improve Turkmenistan as well, and in 1954, work com- drainage and apply sacrificial menced on the Karakum Canal, which would soil layers at monuments that feed water from the Amu Darya—the other will bear the brunt of erosion big Aral Sea source—into the Turkmen heart- rather than the original walls.