North-Crimean Canal. Ukraine, North-Crimean Canal

The reunion of the Autonomous Region of Crimea with Russia caused a complex and painful reaction in the new Ukrainian authorities. The fact that this act was supported by the majority of the population of the peninsula was first denied by them. However, further actions unequivocally confirmed the awareness of the reliability of this situation. The North-Crimean Canal, which provides up to 85% of the needs of the inhabitants of the Crimea and its economic structure, has actually ceased to function.

Converters of nature

In order to imagine the scale of this hydraulic structure, it is enough just to point out the fact that there is no larger artificial river in the world. The length of the waterway exceeds four hundred kilometers, the whole Union built it. In the very idea of creating a man-made system that gave life to fruitless arid lands, the desire of two Soviet leaders, JV Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, for all their dissimilarity to demonstrate to the world the advantages of a new social formation, socialism, and the determination to change and Improvement of everything, even nature itself. In the early fifties, a plan for transforming landscapes and reliefs was put into practice. As something real, projects were taken to level the mountains and turn the rivers back. Not all of them were realized, but the North-Crimean canal, whose map from Tavriysk through Armyansk and Krasnoperekopsk was repeatedly outlined in blue pencil and a handle of Stalin's pipe, was more fortunate.

Time for wond

October 17 is a significant date for the generation of the "sixties". In 1957, on that day, a Soviet spacecraft opened an era of satellites. In 1963, the town of Armyansk shook the explosion, but he did not frighten anyone, but on the contrary, delighted thousands of people gathered at the solemn meeting. The First Secretary himself arrived at the ceremony, the charge of TNT dared a narrow jumper of the ground, and a merry Dnipro water poured into the breach. Thus, the issue of irrigation of lands previously considered unfit for agricultural processing was radically solved. More recently, another man-made miracle happened, the flight of Gagarin, and of course, it occupied a priority place in the minds of contemporaries, but the North-Crimean canal, in spite of its apparent prosaic nature, turned out to be no less amazing than human hands.

A complex system

The construction begun under Stalin was resumed in April 1961. Entire editions of specialized universities were sent to the percussion object, and young engineers in practice comprehended the subtleties of their chosen profession. Several construction and assembly departments, mobile mechanized columns and other organizations were given the task of creating conditions for irrigation of 180,000 hectares, for which only one channel was insufficient, so the North Crimean Canal is a complex and branched structure with lateral outflows, pumping stations, water outlets And other hydrotechnical units. Such a broad scheme required the preservation of all other infrastructure: roads, railroad tracks, pipelines and power lines. To this end, the builders built many bridges.

Stages of construction

The first stage of the waterway as a whole was completed by 1978. The single plan envisaged irrigation of the entire peninsula and the completion of construction in Evpatoria. On it, and acted until 1990, commissioning annually up to 30 kilometers of waterways. The final stage, begun in 1985, was not completed. In 1991, on the wreckage of a great country, new independent states emerged, including Ukraine. The North-Crimean channel turned out to be an unbearable burden for the economy of this country, and the construction was frozen, although for its completion there was not enough small amount in the macroeconomic scale, 23 million hryvnia.

Characteristics

And in the unfinished form, this gigantic structure impresses with its scale. Ten thousand employees of high qualification took part in its construction. The total cost of the executed estimates in comparable prices exceeded one and a half billion Soviet rubles. Water in the North-Crimean canal can pass at a speed of 300 tons per second, providing a flow of 1 billion 300 million cubic meters per year to the peninsula. During the construction, almost 1.5 billion cubic meters of soil was extracted. Three million tons of concrete is laid in the bottom and walls of the canal. Its width in individual sections is one and a half hundred meters. Construction lasted a total of 36 years. All these characteristics could become a pride of any people of the planet, any country in the world. Americans are happy to talk about the Hoover Dam in Nevada, carry tourists to it. The North-Crimean channel was not given such an honor.

Overlapped channel

During the period when the Crimean Autonomous Republic was located within Ukraine, domestic economic issues were difficult to resolve. The peninsula was considered a subsidized region, its debts to the state budget were accumulated, including for the used Dnipro water. What would be the further development of events and how this problem could be solved, now it remains only to guess. There are apparently no projects to improve the efficiency of the economy of the autonomous region, at least nothing is known about them. Its separation from Ukraine after the events on the Maidan transferred relations between the peninsula and "the rest of the country" de facto to the rank of interstate.

As an incentive for the return of the breakaway peninsula in April 2014, the North-Crimean canal was blocked. However, this fact was also denied, although there is enough evidence for it. This is the empty channel, and pictures taken from the plane, proving attempts to fill the channel with light polypropylene bags filled with sand or earth. The Ukrainian authorities claim that an accounting point for discharged water is under construction, other explanations are given, often contradicting each other, but the fact remains that water does not flow to the peninsula. The government of the subject of the Russian Federation took measures to ensure the independence of the hydraulic system from external supplies. The government of Ukraine actually recognized the Crimeans as foreigners.

Further development of the conflict is a topic of bold hypotheses. One thing is clear: it is only a part of the accumulated international problems.