Manych Ship Canal - Benefits

Benefits

Fresh water from the Canal could increase yields of agriculture and husbandry in arid areas. Hydroelectric pumped storage power plants could be constructed on the base of facilities of the canal. Such power plants could significantly increase operating benefits of wind-driven power plants planned to be constructed in the Republic of Kalmykia and the Stavropol Territory. Canal facilities could include water reservoirs up-slope of the canal for a pumped-storage hydroelectricity power generation scheme in times of peak level usage or zero-wind conditions. Sixty MW of electric power will be required to provide a water supply for each lock. Power can be provided by construction of 30 wind-electric sets with an output of 3 MW each. This would require 10 sets near each lock on the eastern slope of the Canal. Energy may be recovered while filling and draining the locks. Construction of the Manych Ship Canal can become a comprehensive approach to the development of arid areas possibly minimizing negative environmental consequences of earlier projects in the Manych-Chograi ecosystem.

The project will shorten delivery time and reduce transport expenses to improve the competitive position of the Russian transportation network. Construction and maintenance of the canal will promote further development of the regional productive forces by establishing new enterprises and workplaces to reduce social tension and increase tax revenues in regions with a high unemployment rate.

Positive consequences of implementation of the project:

• 1. Creation of prerequisites for social and economic, agricultural, industrial development, development of nature conservation and fish processing industry in the adjacent regions of Kalmykia, Dagestan, Stavropol krai and Rostov oblast.
• 2. Improvement of water supply in the arid zone. A quarter of the population of the Republic of Kalmykia coastal zone suffer from kidney problems attributed to saline groundwater and transfer of salt by wind from the area adjacent to Manych Lake. After construction of the Manych Ship Canal it will be possible to supply Manych-Gudilo Lake with fresh water to reduce water salinity.
• 3. Investigations of the local ecosystems may increase assessments for nature conservation.
• 4. Job growth, creation of workplaces, cessation of the outflow of able-bodied population, and influx of qualified specialists from other regions and cities.
• 5. Widening of the existing social infrastructure of dwelling houses, kindergartens, educational institutions, and hospitals to improve citizens' health and optimize demographic and environmental conditions in the region.

Completion of construction of Manych Ship Canal will lead to emergence of manufacturing activities, significant decrease of unemployment rate, normalization of migration situation, increasing of incomes and improving the well-being of the people.

Fresh water from the canal would potentially increase productivity of agriculture and husbandry. Desalinization of strongly saline water bodies along the canal route may significantly improve qualitative composition and yields of fishery.

Lack of employment leads to the drift of the population away from the region while a narrow range of choice of needed professions, as a rule, limited to agriculture and husbandry, brings highly skilled specialists, among them graduates of the best colleges or universities of Russia, to look for a job away from home. Therewith, present rates of birth and natality of the South of Russia, the highest in Russian Federation, allow us to suggest future aggravation of the problem of employment if the present situation does not change. Completion of construction of the Canal will lead to the emergence of considerable quantity of new jobs in production, formed by the influence of operation of the Canal (oil processing/refining, chemical industry, other export-oriented productions) and in the process of construction and operation of the navigational route directly. It should be mentioned, that creation of new jobs in productive industry leads to increasing of number of employees in service industries.

A ship canal allows shipment of a wider variety of cargo than pipeline systems limited to products of the hydrocarbon process industry. Ship canal would become an important factor of developing of manufacturing industry of the South of Russia (Republics of Kalmykia and Dagestan, Stavropol and Krasnodarskiy Territories, Rostov and Astrakhan Regions). Oil and gas processing, chemical industry and other export-oriented productions can get a high-power development impulse.

Decrease of unemployment rate would be one important result of construction of the Manych Ship Canal. Southern Federal District is the most problem region of Russia with a view to the employment of population, and that is one of the causes of social tensions growth.