Aral Sea Demise Harms People Of Mujnak

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: When the Soviet Union collapsed five years ago, newly independent central Asian Nations, among them Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, faced a range of problems: devastated economies, human rights abuses, and a crisis of their cultural and political identity.

They've also had to deal with one of the greatest environmental disasters in the world today, the drying up of the Aral Sea.

NPR Mike Shuster spent several weeks in Central Asia. He visited a town that was once a thriving fishing port, but today is miles from the shores of the Aral and barely able to support life.

MIKE SHUSTER, NPR REPORTER: The facts about the Aral Sea are dumbfounding. The Sea in the middle of the Kyzylkum desert in Uzbekistan was once the fourth largest body of fresh water in the world. It provided the Soviet Union with the bulk of the fish it consumed.

Now, it is a third of what it once was. Most of its fish have died. And the winds that blow from its salty shores have contaminated central Asia for hundreds of miles.

Knowing these facts is not the same thing as being there. 

SOUND OF COWS MOOING

SHUSTER: The true devastation of the Aral Sea can only be seen here, in the town of Mujnak.

I'm standing on what used to be the bottom of the harbor. And from here to the horizon was sea. Now, there's nothing but devastation. There's the hulks...

SHUSTER: ... these hulks, rusting hulks of old fishing trollers, maybe a dozen, 20 fishing trollers simply lying on the bottom of what used to be the harbor, now covered in dust and mud and scrub grass.

About 20,000 people still live in Mujnak, and many of them are terribly sick. Their drinking water has been polluted by the salts from the receding sea, and the millions of tons of fertilizers and pesticides the Soviets used to cultivate vast areas of the surrounding desert with cotton.

Oran Bayi Serkepov has lived in Mujnak all his life. His father made his living until 1960 as a fisherman. Serkepov is the town's only doctor, and he himself is afflicted with cancer of the esophagus.

ORAN BAYI SERKEPOV, DOCTOR FOR CITY OF MUJNAK, (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): People are suffering from anemia. People are suffering from cancer, from cirrhosis of the liver, and cancer of the liver. Why?

Because we are using water that is unfit. Not a single civilized country in the world lets people use such water. It's out of the question. But we use it because there is no other drinking water.

SHUSTER: The levels of cancer of the esophagus are 15 times higher in Mujnak than in the rest of Uzbekistan. The people of Mujnak also suffer from high levels of intestinal diseases, hepatitis, kidney failure, and tuberculosis. 

There is little work in Mujnak. Once this fish cannery employed nearly 2,000 year round. Now for a few hundred workers, there is employment barely three months out of 12. This day was one of the better days. The factory just received sheet metal from which it molds the cans.

SOUNDS OF HEAVY MACHINERY

SHUSTER: But the fish comes not from the Aral Sea, but frozen from the Caspian, a thousand miles to the west. Uzbekistan's government can hardly afford to pay for the sheet metal to make the cans that would keep the factory operating. The workers here said this shipment would keep the factory running for just ten days.

The causes of this disaster go back nearly half a century to the decision in Moscow to build a vast system of irrigation canals throughout the deserts of central Asia in order to grow cheap cotton. In 1953, the Soviets built a canal 500 miles south of Mujnak, through the empty sands of the Karakum desert.

So, we're standing here at the Karakum Canal, in Mary, in Turkmenistan. Tell us about the canal.

TONYA LUMINA, TOUR GUIDE, KARAKUM CANAL: Okay, the Karakumskij Canal is the longest artificial river in the world. The length of which is 1,350 kilometers.

SHUSTER: Tonya Lunina, a long time tour guide, and Marie, explains that the Karakumskij Canal takes about a sixth of the water of the Amu Darya River and diverts it into Turkmenistan to irrigate the vast cotton farms that have spread north into the desert.

TONYA LUMINA, TOUR GUIDE, KARAKUM CANAL: Starts from the river Amu Darya in the east and goes to the Caspian shore to the west, so you see, the conditions of the desert, the water here is considered like gold.

SHUSTER: Schoolchildren picking cotton along the Amu Darya River in Uzbekistan. Like their Soviet forbears, the leaders of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan still force students to spend several weeks each year picking cotton until their hands are raw from the scratches. They receive pennies per pound for their efforts.

The Soviets planted so much cotton in central Asia and diverted so much water from the region's rivers, that by the 1980s, the flow of water into the Aral Sea had shrunk by more than 90 percent. As early as 1960, the fisherman in Mujnak knew something was wrong with the Aral, and they complained to Moscow. 

Sabir Kamalov (ph), one of the local experts on the Aral Sea disaster, said that in 1962, he personally attended a meeting where representatives from Moscow shocked the local residents by the conclusions they had reached.

SABIR KAMALOV, ARAL SEA DISASTER EXPERT, (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): This official said, and I heard it with my own ears, "We crossed off the Aral sea, a long time ago. Crossed it off. There'll be no saving the Aral. In the end, it will dry up."

But the Soviets had not anticipated the wider repercussions of their decision. They did not understand that the salts from the sea would contaminate the desert. They did not anticipate that the rivers themselves would become contaminated with pesticides and fertilizers dumped by the plane load over the desert farms.

Now the land is white with salts and other chemicals that have permeated the upper levels of the soil. Cotton yields have plummeted. Most local experts fear that if something is not done soon, life, human and otherwise, may no longer be sustainable near the Aral Sea. 

All the governments of the region are now working on how to reverse the disaster. As is the World Bank, the UN, the European Union and many many other governments. The solutions vary from diverting the great rivers of Siberia, to uprooting the 1,000,000 people who still live near the sea.

Sabir Kamalov argues that the answer is more modest.

KAMALOV (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The only way out is the rational use of the sea's water sources. We must put the agriculture on the scientific footing. Otherwise, there will be no way out.

SHUSTER: That could mean making the cotton farms pay for the water in order to stimulate conservation and end wastefulness. Ultimately, it means reducing the cotton crops. But that would inevitably inflict more economic pain on societies still reeling from the Soviet collapse.

So many wonder if the Aral Sea can be saved at all. Phillip Micklin (ph), an American water expert, who is now Special Adviser to the Uzbekistan government, says he believes it can, but not in the near future.

PHILLIP MICKLIN, SPECIAL ADVISER TO UZBEKISTAN GOVERNMENT: I haven't written the Aral Sea off, and I don't think people down here have either. But to restore to flow it's going to take a very long period of time, very long.

I'm not sure, even over longer term, if you could ever bring the sea back to what it was in the 1950s. There's general agreement that short to medium term, five years to 25 years, there's no real possibility of restoring the sea.

SHUSTER: Where does that leave the people of Mujnak who live on the waterless edge of what was once the sea? It leaves Oran Bayi Serkepov, the doctor with cancer of the esophagus, with little more than a lifetime of rage.

SERKEPOV: Those people who destroyed the Aral Sea, they must answer before the Lord. Who are they? In my time, I screamed about it. And then I lost my health. Who are they? No one answers for this.

SHUSTER: This is Mike Shuster reporting.