Experience in operating the Lenin Karakum Canal headworks

Conclusions

• 1. Desilting of the water taken in from the Amudarya River in settling basins and removal of the sediment from them is the main operational undertaking at the Karakum Canal Headworks. Dumping of a substantial quantity of sediment removed from these settling basins into the river causes overloading of the stream and silting, which entails a rise of the river bed and of water levels to an extent endangering the regulating structures. The basic solution of the sediment regime regulation at the canal intake is to transport the major part of it into large offstream reservoirs, now being planned, and to accumulate the sediment in them.

• 2. An effective means of combating channel erosion and shifting of the channels of the canals toward the concave bank are straightening cuts in these areas.

• 3. In reaches with systematic channel erosion (in connection with the greater than planned slope resulting from the elimination from the project of a partitioning structure at kilometer 50) and on silted oxbow lakes, the stream forms a channel sufficient to pass ever-increasing discharges of the water intake.