The first irrigation season of the North Crimean Canal since 2014 has ended in Crimea. The channel is being actively prepared for winter. In a maximum of a couple of weeks, water will be poured into bulk tanks, and the artery itself will be subjected to scheduled work so that the canal will meet the next irrigation season in an updated state.
The discharge from the canal is being made for the first time in eight years. The efficiency of using the Dnieper water was at least 86%. Costs – evaporation, filtration into the soil and techno-discharges turned out to be minimal. The rest of the Dnieper water will go to the Smolensk reservoir, which feeds Shchelkino and the territory of the Leninsky district of the peninsula.
“The station, where Kerch drinks from, has already been filled with 20 million cubic meters of water, while the city and districts consume about 40 thousand cubic meters per day. This year, 210 million cubic meters were supplied through the canal – half for irrigation and the same amount for bulk reservoirs, – said Roman Zakharov, adviser to the head of the State Committee for Water Resources”.
“In general, the reserve in all drinking reservoirs is 240 million cubic meters, about 80% of the design volume, in order to leave room for rainfall. But this water will be enough for us for 1.5 years, even if there is no rain,” PolitNavigator quotes.
As explained in the State Committee for Water Resources, in the service year, the irrigation season will approximately cover almost fifty thousand hectares of the Crimean land, which requires careful preparation of units, assemblies, dampers and other equipment.
“All our work is planned, and in winter the peak of work is on repairs,” explained Alexander Rudenko, director of the Leninsky branch of Krymmeliovodkhoz. – Pumps are in order, repairs are needed for shield jams, lifts. We are making purchases for 580 thousand rubles this season. We are waiting for the canal to be freed from water and we will start work.”
At the same time, as noted in the department, now the channel is operating outside the design capacity.
“It is impossible to restore the entire irrigation area in a year to the levels of 2014, when 1.2 billion cubic meters of water was pumped along the artificial river.”
The revival of the sprinkler fleet will lead to an increase in applications for the irrigation season, and this, in turn, will affect the efficiency of using the artery for agricultural purposes. As expected. in 2023, the canal will supply a little less than three hundred million cubic meters of Dnieper water to the fertile Crimean lands.
Recall that the water through the canal came to the Crimea in early March. The Russian Armed Forces blew up a dam installed by Ukrainian nationalists in the Kherson region.
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