Mangistau plans to compensate water deficit with groundwater

AKTAU. KAZINFORM A meeting in the regional administration with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture Askar Myrzahmetov considered the need to use groundwater reserves, Kazinform correspondent reports.

"Today 60 rural settlements of Mangystau region are home for 354,000 people. And half of them do not have access to a centralized water supply. In general, water supply is provided from three sources. Water consumption there amounts to 41.6 million cubic meters per year or 114 thousand cubic meters per day.

It was proposed to maximize the use of groundwater resources and provide these settlements with local water supply systems, since pipelines are very expensive and increase the cost of supplying water, to subsidizing costs from the budget," said Nurlan Aldamzharov, Deputy Chairman of the Water Resources Committee of Agriculture Ministry.

He noted that water pipelines are used only when there are no alternative sources of water supply and stressed that as far as in 2013 the Committee was developing the concept of water supply to Mangistau and the forecasted groundwater reserve in the region is 510 million cubic meters per year.

"Of these, more than 90 million cubic meters are confirmed, this amount should cover the shortage in water consumption," he said.