European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 14, 2007, Darmstadt, Hesse                                July 2007 stars and stripes Page 11 aral sea returns to revive withered villages by Peter finn the Washington Post Kazakhstan in the Cool of one recent after tending to his Herd of 19 Puz Blay  and four companions pushed his Small single engine boat out onto the Placid Waters of the aral sea to Lay in the he he would haul in Flap Ping Carp and it is a daily task that until recently had seemed forever lost to the Folly of the aral its sustaining Riv ers diverted to irrigate Cotton was for decades on an irrevocable course to death and one of the 20th Century worst ecological disasters consumed More than half the seas surface area and three quarters of its vol creating Square Miles of dried up the shr Veling sea bequeathed Poison Ous chronic health dead fishing grounds and unemployment to this part of Southern but now the or at least a part of is coming retracing its destructive Retreat and of Fering villagers such As be Ytem Bentov nothing less than renewed its Good to be Back on the in Happy for said the weather beaten Peter the Washington Puz Blay a Fisherman from who turned to Camel herding when the aral sea Shoreline tends the who turned to Camel herding when the Shoreline but its not the sea it used to that the tas Tupek and other villages Are rejuvenating because an eight Lelong dam now blocks a narrow Channel through which water drained freely from the Northern sea to the water that the syr Darya River delivers into the Northern sea is building slowly expanding its completed in the million Kokaras dam project was financed by the world Bank and the kazakh gov the much larger Southern parts of the aral Are still though they get a bit of overflow from the the turkmen and uzbek governments continue to draw most of the water from the arabs second feeding the Amu to irrigate crops and sustain the lives of millions of peo Uzbekistan plans to explore the dried up sea bed for the disaster began almost half a Century ago because soviet Cen trial planners in Moscow wanted lots of in the Early bureaucrats sitting Miles from the aral sea ordered that the amount of water diverted from the seas two feeding Rivers be dramatically increased to drive new production of that irrigated areas in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan jumped from million acres to million acres Over two by the time the syr Darya and Amu Darya which together Mea sure More than reached the aral they were reduced to trickles that into the spreading blistering summer heat evaporated almost As much water from the sea As the Rivers historically Dis charged into As the size of the sea its salinity killing off fresh water four indigenous Spe including the Small aral sea Are now in for the first there was no fish catch at All in a sea that once was Bountiful with Perch and this was a very Rich but when the fish died the people said Khasan pointing to abandoned Homes in for those who the grow ing desert spelled a health discs fierce dust storms kicked up not just Sand and but also chemicals and pesticides that had washed into the sea from intensive farming along the two respiratory and kidney and liver diseases in the Region according to kazakh statistics and local the aral sea contained  a testing ground for soviet biological Wear including agents such As bubonic plague and live anthrax spores were discovered in 1999 the United states has since helped decontaminate 10 anthrax burial Sites we believe the water will come Back to right to the Vil said Kurmanay to a fishing inspector who lives in we have a future