| Kulunda Main Canal Кулундинский магистральный канал | |||||||||||
| Canal Length: | 1820NaN0 | ||||||||||
| Status: | Unfinished | ||||||||||
| Date Began: | August 1973 | ||||||||||
| Date Completed: | November 1983 | ||||||||||
| Start Point: | Ob river | ||||||||||
| End Point: | Kuchuk river | ||||||||||
| Module: |
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The Kulunda Main Canal (Russian: Кулундинский магистральный канал) is an irrigation canal in Altai Krai, Russian Federation.[1] [2] The canal was built to bring water to the Kulunda Steppe, a region periodically subjected to severe droughts.
The canal begins close to Kamen-na-Obi and runs first southwards; shortly thereafter it heads in a southeast direction then it bends and runs in a roughly southwest direction. It passes through the Kamensky, Tyumentsevsky, Bayevsky, Blagoveshchensky and Rodinsky districts. The total length of the canal is 182km (113miles) with a capacity of 25m3/s and two pumping stations. The main pumping station is in Kamen-na-Obi and it pumps the water of the Ob river at an elevation of 1130NaN0 to the edge of the Ob Plateau at an elevation of 1400NaN0. The secondary one is further south in Klyuchi village, Tyumentsevsky District.
The canal ends at the Kuchuk river close to Novotroitsk. A NaN120 extension reaching Zlatopol was projected, but never carried out.[1] [3] [4]
Construction of the canal began in August 1973, at the time of the USSR. The project had been put forward at the beginning of the decade and aimed to irrigate 20000ha in the area of Novotroitsk, as well as Zlatopol, located further west near the Kazakhstan–Russia border. Besides, it was expected that the canal would also benefit 18500ha of agricultural fields and around 45000ha of pastureland in the areas located by the eastern section of the canal.[1]
In present times the surfaces watered by the canal have diminished. The canal has become silted in some places with water overflowing its banks in heavy rain, leading to the flooding of inhabited areas. In other stretches its waters are absorbed by the sandy soil, owing to the deterioration of the original watertight coating. The canal crosses areas with various types of soil, including clayey, sandy, loamy, and solonetz soils. An approximately length totaling 800NaN0 running through sandy soil sectors was planned to be provided with an anti-filtration polyethylene coating over a 10NaN0 thick protective layer of soil. But in the end only a 200NaN0 length of canal sections were treated against filtration and the coating has a lifetime of about 30 years, which already ran out by the turn of the millennium. Plans for the maintenance and a thorough overhaul of the canal have been put forward, but so far they have not been implemented.[1] [5]
The Kulunda Main Canal runs roughly in a NE/SW direction only 1km (01miles) to the east of lake Gorkoye, a long salt lake. The building of the canal disrupted the Gorkoye ecosystem by increasing the salinity of the lake and some fish species died out.[6]
