If you drive along the Cherkessk-Pyatigorsk highway, then 17-18
kilometers from the republican center to the right of the road you can
see a rather large lake, the area of \u200b\u200bwhich averages 170-173
hectares, and a depth of about one meter. By the way, these numbers are
constantly changing. There will be heavy rains - the area of
\u200b\u200bthe lake increases in size by a certain number of hectares,
the summer will turn out to be dry - the water surface recedes, or even
dries up completely.
Despite the fact that the depth of the lake
is negligible - even a child can pass from coast to coast, no one could
drown in it, even if it were much deeper. The thing is that the water of
the lake contains a lot of salts and pushes the body to the surface. The
lake is called the Small Salt Lake.
Previously, in the
neighborhood of Lake Maly, there was Lake Bolshoi Salt, which was also
located on the south side of the road, but two kilometers to the east.
This lake had a different fate. Having received the water of the Great
Stavropol Canal, Bolshoe Salt Lake turned into a reservoir, retaining
only the first part of its name.
Batalpashinsky Big and Small
Salt (sulfate) lakes with bitter-salty water have been known for a long
time and belonged to the salt lakes of Ciscaucasia, which stood out in
size and had a high salt concentration. Being flat (the lakes lay on a
flat plain, bordered from the north by the low Sychev Mountains), they
were located at the bottom of a vast basin in bowl-shaped, flat-bottomed
depressions with low edges. The basin is about 15 kilometers long and up
to 10 kilometers wide. The total catchment area is about 130 km2.
The sizes of the lakes (the first is Bolshoe Salt Lake, the second -
Small): area - 996.7 and 173.4 hectares; the length of the coasts is
11.9 and 5.4 kilometers; the greatest length is 4.5 and 1.7 kilometers;
the greatest width is 2.8 and 1.4 kilometers; bottom mark above sea
level - 606.1 and 602 meters.
The surface of the bottom of the
lakes is completely flat. The western and southwestern shores of the
lakes were steep and steep. The height of the western shore of the Big
Lake was 12 meters, the Small - 8 meters.
At the base of the lake
basin there is a thick layer of Maikop clay, the layers of which have a
gentle slope to the northeast. Their exits are found to the west and
southwest of the lakes along the banks of the Kuban and Ovechka. Maikop
clays of the lake basin are covered with pebbles and conglomerates, and
closer to the lakes - with ancient lake deposits. Pebbles and ancient
lake sediments are overlain by strata of loess-like loams with a
thickness of 3 to 15 meters.
In 1841, the pharmacist's apprentice
N. Mikhailov discovered deposits of Glauber's salt in the Bolshoi and
Maly Salt Lakes. The lakes belonged to the Khoper Regiment, which in
1879 leased them to Baron Fitingof. A little later, the right to extract
this valuable mineral was transferred to a French joint-stock company
for the development of rock salt and natural soda in South Russia. The
Kuban newspaper (No. 2, 1881, Ekaterinodar) reported that “agents of a
French company left Paris for Batalpashinsk, which at first expects to
extract no more than half a million pounds of salt; next to this,
manufacture anhydrous Glauber's salt. In 1881, factory buildings, a
grinding mill were built, an engine and a centrifugal machine were
installed. But the very extraction of salt from the lake was carried out
very primitively - the workers had to work knee-deep in water. The
extracted salt was used in the pharmacological industry and for
livestock feed. Salt was sold in Moscow, Kharkov and other cities, and
in processed form it was sold to residents of neighboring villages at a
price of 50 kopecks per pood. The fact that the lakes belonged to the
Cossack army complicated its development, since the army demanded a
large rent. For hard labor on the longest day of the year, the worker
here received up to 25 rubles, the rest of the time - up to 10-12 rubles
a month on the "master's grub." In the late 80s of the 19th century,
cheap salt from Germany began to be brought to Russia. Not receiving the
expected benefits, in 1891 the French joint-stock company terminated the
contract. The lakes with all the property that was with them became the
property of the Kuban Cossack army. No one was in a hurry to rent lakes.
Only in 1904, the lakes and the lands around them were leased from the
Kuban Cossack army by the merchant of the first guild G.F. Malyshev for
a period until October 1, 1918. In 1914, the Malyshev plant produced
1,000 pounds of salt per day.
The strength of the brine of the
lakes was 14° according to BOME, while the depth and strength of the
brine depended on the amount of precipitation and the time of year. One
liter of brine contained: Glauber's salt (sodium sulfate) - 293.29
grams, table salt (sodium chloride) - 48.34 grams, magnesia sulfate -
11.35 grams. Pure Glauber's salt is rare, it was extracted from table
salt. Since 1879, Glauber's salt began to be mined from the
Batalpashinsky Salt Lakes. Its colorless transparent crystals of a
bitter-salty taste have been used since ancient times as a medicine.
Glauber's salt treated various poisonings, indigestion; used it as a
laxative.
The depth of the brine (brine is a saturated solution
of salt in the lake) in the Small Lake did not exceed 40 centimeters,
and in some places the bottom of the lake was exposed. The depth of the
brine of the Great Lake in a large part was about 70 centimeters. The
composition of the brine of the Big and Small lakes almost did not
differ from each other - it was very concentrated, it contained mainly
sodium chloride, sodium and magnesium sulfates. At different times of
the year, the composition of the brine, depending on temperature and
liquefaction, changed. In winter, chloride salts prevailed over sulfate
salts, and vice versa in summer. In summer, during the evaporation of
the brine, gypsum was initially released, then thenardite, table salt
and sodium sulfate. This order of crystallization of salts confirmed
that the lakes are sulfate. Groundwater plays an important role in the
life of lakes. Moving towards the center of the lake basin, they washed
out salts from the soil and served as a source for the renewal of the
salinity of the lakes. Crystallization of Glauber's salt (also known as
mirabilite and hydrous sodium sulfate) from brine occurred during the
cold season.
The Batalpashinsky Salt Lakes have long been famous
for their large reserves of plastic, black mineral mud, a layer of which
was at their bottom. The therapeutic mud resembled wheel ointment and
smelled of hydrogen sulfide. Below this mud lay steel-gray clay, which
then turned into greenish-brown clay of ancient lake deposits. One
hundred grams of dry matter of the mud of the Great Lake contained about
1.5 grams of FeS. The description of the mud and the lakes themselves
was first qualified in 1915 by E.S. Burkser, but back in 1885-1886,
mining engineers Kochetov and Konshin, having explored both lakes,
calculated the reserves of mud and determined its composition, gave the
first analyzes of the brine of the lakes. However, no medical control
over the use of mud has ever been established. Sick people came here
from all over the Batalpashinsky department (and even from beyond its
borders). Some recovered, others did not. However, this is not
surprising: the healing mud had a beneficial effect only in certain
diseases, such as rheumatism, anthrax, jaundice and skin diseases.
Naturally, she could not serve as a panacea for all ills. Each one
prescribed a course of treatment for himself. This led to the fact that
the main reserves of mud were exhausted.
The thickness of the
layer of therapeutic mud of lakes was on average 40 centimeters. Studies
have shown that the mud of the Batalpashinsky Salt Lakes was not
inferior in its healing properties to the well-known mud of the Tambukan
lakes, located near Pyatigorsk in a southwestern direction along the
Pyatigorsk-Nalchik highway. In 1904, the Vrach magazine wrote: “In terms
of its healing qualities, it (the mud of the Batalpashinsky lakes -
S.T.) is second only to the mud in the Khadzhibey estuary and lakes
Chokratsky, Saksky.”
In the 40s of the XX century, the black
mineral mud of the Circassian Salt Lakes was studied in the
microbiological laboratory of the Pyatigorsk Balneological Institute. It
was found that when heated to the temperature of the human body, the mud
became bactericidal, that is, capable of killing streptococci,
dysenteric bacillus and other microbes.
In the 1970s-1990s, the
Small Salt Lake became bitter and dirty, but simply turned into a
garbage dump. It all started with the creation in the Karachay-Cherkess
Autonomous Region of a new district - Prikubansky, with a center in the
village of Kavkazsky, the location of which was chosen near the Small
Lake. The construction of various administrative buildings, educational
buildings of the state farm-technical school, residential multi-storey
buildings also required the laying of sewer networks. The sewerage was
laid, but instead of the unbuilt treatment facilities, with the tacit
consent of various departments, and primarily the sanitary and
epidemiological service, they decided to TEMPORARY use the Salt Lake and
began to directly dump the feces of the village there, convincingly
confirming the saying of the builders: “The most durable structures are
those which are operated temporarily. One does not need to have a great
gift of imagination to imagine a body of water into which the contents
of the sewerage directly “rolled” for decades. Often this content
splashed onto the shores of the former lake. This fact was helped by
flood and rain water. All this “charm” without delay went to the arable
land of the “Rodina” collective farm, the “Priozernoe” collective farm,
“improved” the water of the Ovechka River, and that, in turn, the Kuban.
Getting to the arable land, the contents of the "lake" destroyed winter
wheat, sugar beet and other crops, causing annual losses in the amount
of 200 million rubles (in 1993 prices).
Lake Big Salt does not
exist now: its place was taken by the Kuban reservoir, which is
sometimes called the Big reservoir or the Circassian Sea. The surface
area of this reservoir at maximum filling ranges from 50–70 km2, the
depth is from 14 to 30 meters, and the water reserve reaches 1.3 billion
m3. A dam was built in the lower (western) part of the reservoir. Its
height is 12 meters, length - 6.5 kilometers.
The Kuban reservoir
is one of the largest artificial reservoirs in the North Caucasus. It is
unique because it has a reversible hydroelectric power station. There
were no reservoirs like it in the former Soviet Union. The main purpose
of the reservoir is to regulate the flow of water in the Great Stavropol
Canal. In summer, when the Kuban is full of water, the reservoir stores
water for the winter. Kuban water, passing into the basin of the
reservoir through the turbines of the hydroelectric power station,
generates electrical energy. In winter, turbines serve as pumps that
supply water from the reservoir to the canal in the Stavropol Territory,
and through powerful pipes to the resort cities of the Caucasian Mineral
Waters.
The Big Stavropol Canal (BSC) is the largest
multi-purpose hydrotechnical complex in the Russian Federation, which
was laid in the most difficult engineering and geological conditions and
is unique in design and technical terms. The length of the canal-river
is 159 kilometers, the water permeability is 180 m3/s. BSC is capable of
irrigating 200,000 hectares of arid lands. It provides drinking water to
35 settlements, including Ust-Dzheguta, Cherkessk, Pyatigorsk,
Mineralnye Vody, Essentuki. BSC is working properly for energy. The four
hydroelectric stations built on the canal generate 1 billion
kilowatt-hours of cheap electrical energy per year. The BSC team is
small, only 200 people, but capable, proud of their work. Among the
veterans and leaders of production are machine operators of a wide
profile Anatoly Viktorovich Golubenko, Vasily Dmitrievich Desyatnik,
Pyotr Ivanovich Archibasov, drivers Ivan Vasilyevich Sereda, Nikolai
Grigorievich Shchekin, Dmitry Pavlovich Gnedoy, water cutters Khamid
Abdul-Kerimovich Bayramukov, Raisa Vasilievna Veretennikova and many
others.
After the flooding of the Kuban reservoir with water, a
rapid growth of fish occurred in it. Additionally, Glavk "Azovrybvod"
stocked the reservoir with juveniles of various fish.
Most of all,
crucian carp has become in the reservoir - over 78%. About 9% of the
fish stock are bream. Approximately 5% is occupied by carp, carp, pike
perch, 3% - grass carp and silver carp. Perch, fish, shemaya are single
specimens. There is barbel, chub, trout, podust, catfish. Of the small
fish, there is the North Caucasian gudgeon, the bystrianka, the North
Caucasian bleak, and roach. Siberian fish, such as peled, have been
introduced. No one knows how the buffalo carp from North America and the
Far East rattan ended up here. Thus, there were about 25 species of fish
in the reservoir.
In the 70s of the XX century, the annual
commercial catch of fish in the Kuban reservoir was about 300 tons.
Catching was carried out with a seine 750 meters long and 3.5 meters
wide. All fish was sent to the trade network of Karachay-Cherkessia. In
the early 1980s, the number of fish declined sharply. In 1984,
industrial catching gave only 9 tons, in 1985 - 10 tons (mainly crucian
carp). Since then, industrial fishing in the reservoir has ceased for
many years. One of the reasons for the decrease in the number of fish
was the low biological productivity of the reservoir. The cold Kuban
water, not having time to warm up, was pumped out again and, therefore,
few conditions were created for the development of plankton and
invertebrates necessary for the nutrition of fish. In addition, cold
weather often kept the fish at depth. Frequent and strong winds also
hampered the work of fishermen.
According to calculations in
1986, there were about 1.5 thousand tons of fish in the reservoir. A
catch of even 50 tons for a reservoir is a meager figure. You can get
300-400 tons of fish annually on free feed.