Kura-Araks problems

The 7 mln of population lives on Kura basine.. The extent of the river on territory of Turkey makes 185 km, in Georgia-426 km, and in Azerbaijan- 790 kms. From territory of Turkey Kura, rather pure crosses border with Georgia and becomes soiled in its territory. Crossing the whole territories of Georgia and Azerbaijan it flows into Caspian sea. In Georgia Kura's water is not consumed for drinking purposes, but is mainly used in irrigation. In Georgia 236,270 hectares of agricultural grounds gets under Kura basin. In Azerbaijan Kura- is the main resource of fresh water.
The basic sources of pollution of Kura are: municipal service, industrial enterprises, agriculture. Five power stations are located along the river: Zemoavchal, Ortachal, Chitachev, Shamkir and Ìingechaur.
Unfortunately, cities located in Kura-river basin have no serviceable canalization system . Purification system of municipal waters are in broken condition. The shortage in this system of reconstruction and realization of repair jobs, have caused serious deterioration of quality of waters in Kura. Particularly, pollution the organic substances and compounds of Nitrogen and phosphate have increased.
The industrial enterprises of cities Tbilisi and Rustavi represent basic " hot points " of pollution of the river Kura on territory Georgia. Rustavi metallurgi plant on industrial needs uses 153,9 mln of cubic m. of water of the Kura-river . 136, 5 mln cubic metre of used water flows down to Kura and pollutes by its weighed particles (7100 ton), nitrogen ammonia (216,5 ton), oil (18 ton), phenol (0,2 ton). On data for 1992 waster water flowing to Kura from 31 plants of Tilisi have made 1,8mlm of cubic metre, which contained BOD (3,2ton), chrom (4,5 ton) , oil (1,5 ton).
Pollution of water by agricultural drains is very significant.
Such a pollution of drinking water comes from Gyanja, Yevlax, Mingechaur, Kurdamir, Alibayramli and other cities of Azerbaijan, as well as from pump terminal of Baku. This terminal of drinking water serves about 2 mln of population.

It is necessary to note, that on Kura-delta the concentration of harmful impurity exceeds allowable concentration as much as 10 times for phenol, 14 times for phosphat, 20 times for oil, 1,3 times for nitrats and etc.. Therefore the problem of prevention of pollution Kura and Araks is a general problem for all Caucasus countries, and the decision it largely depends on essential change of public attitude to the given problem.
For achievement of this purpose, besides means (application purification technologies, the reduction of drains) extremely important is connection of wide layers of a public to the decision of problems of the river Kura. Internationalization of Kura protection problems, involving two or three countries can in this case be more effective.
Between Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan there is no unified control system of pool of the river and monitoring of water quality.
In spite of the fact that TACIS and UNDP implement projects on the given problem, e sufficient cooperation still needed for these countries for solving of regional ecological problems Kura-Araks rivers.