I guess the Aral Sea is still fucked.
I'm at JFK airport and just did a double take at the counter for Uzbekistan Airways, which I did not know was an entity with such reach.
I remember something in a podcast to the effect of, building a lot of public buildings in Paris was the closest thing to Keynesian stimulus in the capabilities or interest of the Napoleonic state. I wonder if that's another part of why the Taliban is pursuing it so assiduously - alongside opening up farmland, of course.
Unctuous Uzbekistan was "ready to work with the Islamic emirate (the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan) through technical teams in order to maximize the benefits of the Qosh Tepa canal project."
Man, it is nice to live by the headwaters, possession being nine-tenths and all. Sucks to be a tail-ender.
Except for the part about living under the Taliban.
They're working off plans made by the old government, and working fast it seems, but there are quality concerns.
Assessing the quality of the canal's construction raises serious doubts, evident from accessible materials and satellite imagery. The construction methods employed appear remarkably rudimentary, with a mere "digging" approach devoid of proper reinforcement or lining for the canal's bottom and banks. Such an approach poses a grave risk, as significant water losses may occur due to seepage into the dry, sandy soil. The resulting loss of water in canals exacerbates the already pressing issues of salinization and waterlogging in irrigated lands, amplifying the risks of water loss to an alarming extent.
If you want religious fundamentalists who are good at farming, you need the Amish.
Yeah. It will be a horrible canal with a ton of seepage and no water level control. It was always already an ecological disaster.
Cement takes energy to make, this is the option if you have a bunch of voluntold ex-opium farmers and not much spare fuel or power plant capacity.
Also discussed in 8 is that a huge chunk of Uzbekistan's water demand is for... cotton.
Cotton doesn't intrinsically bother me. At least it is an important fiber. I feel pretty testy about irrigated animal feed.
Looks like almonds are finally glutted.
I'm all about the irrigated animal feed lately. Sorry.
Speaking of!
https://www.rferl.org/a/central-asia-cotton-diminishing-returns/32698749.html
5 +++
14, 15 -- Growing corn to make jet fuel: is it the new almonds?
I guy on my pub trivia team just got back from an extended trip to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, among other places, and I'll ask him about this.
At the annual water law conference last October, there was a session on the 1973 Water Use Act, which was required to implement the water law provisions in our then-new constitution. What struck me was the depth of the paranoia in the last 60s and very early 70s about downstream states, Texas, and California stealing our water. The paranoia was so strong that decades of resistance to statewide recording and management of water rights was swept aside: we embraced a species of centralization because only collectively could we resist the onslaught. Did it work? Has anyone seen any Montana water showing up in California?
(That's a joke. I think the paranoia was way overwrought. But I also think that centralizing was worth doing . . .)
amplifying the risks of water loss to an alarming extent
One could call it water loss. Or one could call it "a new aquifer."
One could, but all the good spin doctors left two years ago.
There haven't been two princes since the current one's older brother died as a child in 1942.
||
Trudeau was depicted on his knees, fellating an oil derrick rising from the crotch of Alberta's premier. In front of this bracing tableau, also carved in snow, was the caption "TRUDEAU WANTS EVERY DROP."|>
There are similar issues in the south. The Kajaki Dam in Helmand, as well as being a major hydro power station (which the Taliban spent about a decade fighting to keep offline), controls water supply into Iranian Baluchistan via the Helmand River. https://www.ariananews.af/irans-president-warns-afghanistans-rulers-about-water-rights/
I've just taken a new water law case -- the retiring lawyer is bringing me the files later this morning. Creek at issue runs into the Kootenai River, which is spelled Kootenay in Canada, and the client's irrigated ground is maybe 6 miles south of the border. I don't know whether Canada takes an interest in the adjudication of water in the Kootenai basin, but I wouldn't be shocked if they're standing back, letting the Montana Water Court processes play out, ready to bring it up with the feds if the results are bullshit.
It looks like the bigger international issue here is quality not quantity, with Canadian mines polluting the Kootenay. Not my problem, since my guy's creek arises in the mountains in the US.
The issue in my case is who owns what portions of the water rights my guy owns a portion of as well. That, in turn, is going to depend on land ownership and water use from the mid 1880s to 1973, and then, to a lesser degree 1973 to the present.
I didn't know part of the Kootena[i/y] now forms a binational reservoir with the binational name Koocanusa.
Would the International Kootenay Lake Board of Control have some jurisdiction under the treaties? Or at least the IJC that it seems to be closely connected to?