Typically, in winter, the water level in the Sergeevsky reservoir in the North Kazakhstan region drops 50-70 cm below the dam level, and by December the reservoir mirror is completely frozen, and the recorded water level does not change until spring. The arriving water passes through a hydroelectric power station built into the dam and continues its course towards Petropavlovsk already under ice and a thick layer of snow. However, after the spring flood of 2024 in Kazakhstan and in winter, water continues to be drained from regulated reservoirs, for example from the Astana reservoir. Because of this, the usual cycle at unregulated reservoirs has been disrupted, the publication says Petropavlovsk.news:

Residents of Sergeevka published a photo of the waterworks in the group «Sergeevka, news and more, January 5. The photo clearly shows that water continues to overflow through the crest of the dam in mid-winter.

This is an extremely unusual picture for winter. Typically, at this time, water is poured only from the pipe under the turbine hall of the hydroelectric power station inside the concrete dam, where the hydroelectric power station and its control panel are located. There is a daily shift of a dozen people who serve the technical needs of all units.

The water passing through the turbines produces sufficient electricity along the way to illuminate the city of Sergeevka. And all this happens almost — underwater. Sergeevskoe itself «sea» at this moment serenely — white desert.

But not this year.

On January 6, at a staff meeting of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of Kazakhstan, preparations for the flood period were discussed: free containers are being freed up in the country’s reservoirs.

— The volume of water in the Astana reservoir was reduced to 83%: from December 20, 2024 to January 3, 2025, 5.06 million cubic meters of water were discharged from it. By April 1, 2025, the ministry plans to reduce the volume of water in the reservoir to 300 million cubic meters or up to 73%, — reports the press service of the Ministry of Water Resources.

This, by the way, is a good indicator of how slightly water discharges from the Astana reservoir actually affect the volumes of water passing through Sergeevka. In Northern Kazakhstan they persistently cultivate the myth that a big flood — is when «in Astana the water was drained», and it flooded everything. Of course, there is more water, its level is rising, but these are not volumes that could cause a disaster in populated areas downstream. Let me remind you that at the peak of the spring flood, 3,600 cubic meters of water per second passed through the Sergeevsky hydroelectric complex. That is, at the peak of the flood, the above volume (5.06 million cubic meters of water in Astana) would have flown in 24 minutes…

Since now the overflow across the crest of the dam is only 10-12 cm, water from Astana has raised the level of Ishim in the Sergeevka area, but will soon decline. True, taking into account the plans of the Ministry of Water Resources to continue draining water from regulated reservoirs, the water level in the Sergeevsky reservoir will fluctuate until spring and periodically overflow through the crest of the dam, preventing the river from freezing normally downstream.

Here we can return to the important idea: it seems that the actions of the Ministry of Water Resources are unprofessional and useless. Draining water from reservoirs in winter — is an absolutely populist activity, since most of the flood waters enter reservoirs in the spring, when the snow begins to melt. The volume of water in reservoirs cannot significantly affect the passage of the spring flood… We already wrote about this earlier when in Sergeevka we noticed an unusual storm wave overflowing the dam.

One can only guess how such actions of the Ministry of Water Resources of Kazakhstan will affect the fauna of the Ishim River… For the normal passage of the spring flood, it is necessary to create additional regulated reservoirs, remove dachas from areas of possible flooding, and build dams around city microdistricts located in the lowlands. Drain water from reservoirs that will be filled with flood waters in just a few hours — is pointless, if only because in Kazakhstan there are only two truly large reservoirs, the volume of which can affect something — Bukhtarminskoye and Kapshagayskoye.

The Astana reservoir, by general standards, is — dwarf, it is even almost twice as small as the Sergeevsky one.

By the way, by mid-winter it became almost obvious that the 2025 flood will be weak. But not because of the actions of the Ministry of Water Resources. Due to the abnormally warm start of winter in Kazakhstan, not all reservoirs are frozen, large reservoirs have incomplete ice supply, the ice thickness on the lakes is half that of last year, and the snow cover is significantly below normal… So convulsive measures to prevent a new flood, which were needed last year, cold and snowy, this year — is a waste of time and window dressing.

Andrey Novikov (Petropavlovsk.news)