Water resource

Water resource of the Altai territory are presented by surface and subterranean water. The main rivers are: Ob, Biya, Katun, Aley, Charysh. The total surface flow of the rivers comprise 53,5 cubic kilometers per year. The Ob river basin comprise 70% of the Altai territory and gives 53 cubic kilometers. The closed basin of Ob - Irtysh interfluve (30% of the territory) give only 0,5 of the flow.

17085 rivers run in the Altai territory with the total length of 51004 kilometers. There are 16309 rivers with length less 10 kilometers.

776 rivers are over 10 kilometers including 32 rivers over 100 kilometers and 3 rivers over 500 kilometers.

9700 rivers have more or less regular watercourse.

The major waterway of Altai - the Ob river - has length of 493 kilometers in the Altai territory and comes from confluence of Biya and Katun.

Ob’s biggest tributaries Alei, Charysh, Chumysh are over 500 kilometers.

Over 11000 lakes are present in the Altai territory, 230 of them have area over 1 square kilometer.

The biggest lakes are focused in the steppe zone of the territory:

Kulundinskoe lake – 727 square kilometers

Kuchukskoe lake – 181 square kilometers

Gorkoye lake (Romanovskiy district) – 140 square kilometers

Bolshoye Topolnoye lake – 76 square kilometers

Bolshoye Yarovoye lake – 66,7 square kilometers

The Altai territory has considerable resource of subterranean water. Its potential service life time in the plain part of the territory comprises 50 years with the output of 269 cubic meters per second. Barnaul, Novoaltaisk, Slavgorod and most settlements of west Kulunda are ensured with subterranean water for the same period of time. Less then 20% of free-salined subterranean water of the total expected service reserve is used.

In general subterranean and surface water in the Altai territory is enough for providing water to all water consumers in the foreseeable future.

The municipal water supply in the Altai territory is provided in 12 cities and 68 rural communities. The determined capacity of water intake facilities (four river intakes and over 600 boreholes) reaches 1,1 million cubic meters per day; water supply grid length comprises 3,2 thousand kilometers.

There are 60 water storage basins in the territory with the capacity over 1 million cubic meters each. The biggest basin is Gilevskoye water storage basin in the river Aley with 471 million cubic meters. There are 10 large water intake riverside pump workstations, 18 subterranean group water intakes, over 15 thousand artesian wells. The largest hydroeconomic facilities of surface water intake in the Altai territory are:

- city water intakes (Barnaul, Rubtsovsk, Kamen-na-Obi) with capacities of 100, 40 and 43 million cubic meters per year.

- Aleysk irrigation system water intake with capacity of 34 million cubic meters per year.

- Kulundinskiy channel water intake with capacity of 396 million cubic meters per year.

- The water intake of the main channel of Burlinskaya irrigation system with capacity of 388 million cubic meters per year.

The main pollutants of water resource in the Altai territory are enterprise of chemical industry, mechanical engineering, heat-power engineering.

A special question is small river protection from shallowing and pollution. Decrease in percentage of forest land leads to expansion of scour that brings riverbed shallowing. Numerous small lakes are exposed to pollution with domestic drainage of settlements and stock-farms.

A package of water protection and use measures has been prepared that provides improvement of water supply in rural area, lower the sewage volume in open water bodies, prevent disappearing of small rivers.

Information source: The State committee of environment protection of the Altai territory and the Institute of water and environmental problems.