Anam, Grade 8
Tashkent International School (TIS)
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
5/15/03

Save water in Uzbekistan

Today what worries all the humans on the earth is the most precious thing of all “water”. I have based my hypothesis on water by seeing what is going on in Uzbekistan. The earth’s valuables fresh water is found in glaciers, lakes, streams, and rivers. There are three ways in which fresh water exists, standing water, running water, and frozen water.

First reason what I think is that what makes people to use less amount of water in some countries is the amount of money you are paying for it. In Uzbekistan people don’t pay for water. This is one of the major weaknesses of the government of Uzbekistan. People in Uzbekistan are misusing water. In Tashkent where I live, there is plenty of water, but if you’ll take a look in some of the western areas of the country, they have been scarce from water. Day by day, slowly the western areas like Aral Sea, Nukus and others are turning into deserts.
If you over here go in some local houses, you’ll often notice that the water tap is remained opened and the water is running and being wasted. In the main rivers Syr Darya and Amu Darya, there is very low amount of water left to feed the population of the country. In Nukus, people are begging and dying everyday just because they don’t get enough water what they had expected. The craving for water has turned the Aral Sea, once the world’s sixth largest ocean into a shrunken body of lake. And still, the areas are thirsty. Their demand for water already exceeds the entire water flow, so there demands are getting higher and higher for water everyday. In theses areas, there isn’t enough rain or as you call precipitation. They are also not keeping up the water works, which are wasting the water. The deserts in the areas are blossoming and the Aral Sea became starved for water.

One of the results to waste the water was irrigation during Soviet Union, and from this Aral Sea is becoming saltier and saltier. The farmlands are too salty to support crops. In Khiva, the water level is very low. Uzbekistan has not enough money to pay for the maintenance because in the way through Samarkand, there are huge pipes of water what they use for is to irrigate the fields, but sometimes this water enormously leeks because of the poor conditions of the pipes. These pipes were made in Soviet Union and aren’t being repaired up till now.

Well, by seeing these kinds of conditions, I can only say that they use more water like in Tashkent, and don’t even care about the people in western part of the country, if they have more organization to support this issue and to help prevent the water, so people in Karakalpakstan, Nukus and Aral Sea areas can receive much more water of what they had expected before.

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