The reunification of the Autonomous Oblast of Crimea with Russia provoked a complex and painful reaction among the new Ukrainian authorities. The fact that this act was supported by the majority of the population of the peninsula was initially denied by them. However, further actions clearly confirmed the awareness of the reliability of this situation. The North Crimean Canal, providing up to 85% of the needs of residents of the Crimea and its economic structure, has actually stopped working.
Nature converters
In order to imagine the scale of this hydraulic structure, it is enough to point out the fact that there is no greater artificial river in the world. The length of the water artery exceeds four hundred kilometers, the entire Union built it. The very idea of creating a man-made system that gave birth to barren arid lands showed the desire of two Soviet leaders, I.V. Stalin and N.S. Khrushchev, for all their dissimilarity, to demonstrate to the world the advantages of a new social formation, socialism, and the intransigence of the desire to transform and improving everything, even nature itself. In the early fifties, a plan to transform landscapes and reliefs was implemented. Projects to align mountains and river turns were perceived as something real. Not all of them were implemented, but the North Crimean Canal, whose map of passage from Tavriisk through Armyansk and Krasnoperekopsk was repeatedly outlined with a blue pencil and a handle of the Stalin pipe, was waiting for a happier fate.
Time of miracles
October 17 is a significant date for the generation of the sixties. In 1957, on this day, the Soviet spacecraft opened the era of satellites. In 1963, the city of Armyansk was shocked by an explosion, but it didn’t scare anyone, but, on the contrary, delighted thousands of people gathered for a ceremonial rally. The First Secretary himself arrived at the ceremony, the TNT darted off a narrow bridge of soil, and cheerful Dnieper water poured into the breach. So the issue of irrigation of lands that were previously considered unsuitable for agricultural cultivation was radically resolved. 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, with all its apparent prosaicity, turned out to be no less amazing human handiwork.
A complex system
The construction begun under Stalin was resumed in April 1961. Entire graduations of specialized universities were sent to the strike object, and young engineers in practice comprehended the intricacies of their chosen profession. Several construction and installation departments, mobile mechanized columns and other organizations received the task: to create conditions for irrigation of 180,000 hectares, for which only one channel was not enough, therefore the North Crimean Canal is a complex and branched structure with side outflows, pumping stations, water outlets and other hydraulic units. Such a broad scheme required the preservation of all other infrastructure: roads, railroad tracks, pipelines and power lines. For this, builders erected many bridges.
Construction stages
The first phase of the aqueous artery as a whole was completed by 1978. The unified plan involved the irrigation of the entire peninsula and the completion of construction in Yevpatoriya. They acted on it until 1990, putting into operation annually up to 30 kilometers of the waterway. The final stage, begun in 1985, was not completed. In 1991, new independent states appeared on the ruins of a great country, including Ukraine. The North Crimean Canal turned out to be an unbearable burden for the economy of this country, and the construction was frozen, although its completion did not have a fairly small amount on a macroeconomic scale, 23 million hryvnias.
Specifications
And in unfinished form, this gigantic structure impresses with its scale. Ten thousand highly skilled workers constantly took part in its construction. The total cost of the 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 one and a half billion cubic meters of soil were recovered. Three million tons of concrete are laid in the bottom and walls of the canal. Its width in individual sections is one and a half hundred meters. Construction continued for a total of 36 years. All these characteristics could be the pride of any people on 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 Canal did not receive such an honor.
Blocked channel
During the period when the Crimean Autonomous Region was part of 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 Dnieper water. What would be the further development of events and how this problem could be solved, now one can only guess. Apparently, there were no projects to increase 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 the relationship between the peninsula and the "rest of the country" de facto to the rank of interstate.
In April 2014, the North Crimean Canal was blocked as an incentive to return the breakaway peninsula. However, this fact was denied, although evidence was enough for him. This is an empty channel, and pictures taken from an airplane, proving attempts to fill the riverbed with light polypropylene bags filled with sand or soil. The Ukrainian authorities claim that a metering station for released water is being built, other explanations are given, often contradicting each other, but the fact remains that the water does not enter the peninsula. The government of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation has taken measures to ensure the independence of the hydraulic system from external supplies. The government of Ukraine has actually recognized Crimeans as foreigners.
Further development of the conflict is the subject of bold hypotheses. One thing is clear: it is only part of the accumulated international problems.