Turkmenistan has been making tremendous strides since the death of President “Turkmenbashy” Niyazov several years ago. For example, the country has reinstated the PhD degree, which was abolished in 1997. But some bad ideas remain, one of them being the “Golden Age Lake.”

As much a wasteland as California’s Death Valley, the 90 mile long Karashor Depression is a natural depression filled with black sand. Yet in 2000, Niyazov leaned against a spade and breached an earthen dam that started the flow of putrid water into the first segment of a canal intended to fill Karashor to its rim. Niyazov touted Golden Age Lake as a symbol of Turkmen revival.

The plan calls for two canals to bisect the country and funnel runoff from heavily irrigated cotton fields into Karashor. The $6 billion project is designed to drain swamps and combat the buildup of salt and other minerals that have degraded Turkmenistan’s arable land and eroded renowned archaeological monuments. Next month, Turkmen engineers will complete phase one, excavation of the two “collector” canals, each hundreds of kilometers long.

Of course, most experts—i.e. PhDs—are highly skeptical of the project and believe the putrid runoff will poison the land and turn the lake into an artificial Dead Sea. Some experts believe that runoff will be insufficient to fill the lake, as the drainage water will evaporate or seep into the desert through unlined feeder canals. And to prevent Golden Age Lake from running dry and to dilute tainted water, Turkmenistan might top it off with fresh water from a river on Uzbek border that Uzbeks rely for irrigation.

To the north of the Golden Age Lake you’ll see the arid Aral Sea, drained by decades of irrigation of Central Asia that had little net positive result. I don’t have an engineering degree and know nothing about the hard numbers behind environmental science, but the inner skeptic in me thinks this is yet another bad idea.

(Map and information from a recent article in “Science” magazine.)

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