How to turn a body of water inside a big city into environmental dividends

Is it possible to harmoniously fit the lakes into the urban planning policy of an industrial city and monitor the quality of water?

Everyone knows Russian cities that are located on famous and very large lakes. For example, Makhachkala is on the Caspian Sea (its geographers call it a lake), Severobaikalsk is on Lake Baikal, Petrozavodsk is on Lake Onega, Veliky Novgorod is on Ilmen. However, within the boundaries of Russian megacities there are also smaller lakes, while there are unique examples when there are several lakes in the city at once with modern beaches and yacht clubs.

To the question whether it is good to have a lake in the city, the inhabitants unequivocally answer “yes”. But experts have questions. Reservoirs need to be carefully looked after, they sometimes become an obstacle to the construction of various facilities, and if they are ineptly managed, they risk becoming a zone of environmental problems.

Is it easy to harmoniously fit natural objects into the urban planning policy of the metropolis? There are good examples of this in the world. In the same Moscow, they effectively set about providing access to the main river to residents and reformatting the industrial zone (with simultaneous cleaning of the channel, control of the water level, and improvement of its quality). Everyone noticed the changes.

The experience of the same Russian Chelyabinsk shows that the competent use of lakes within the city brings some dividends, including ecology. Guests of the metropolis, which for some reason is associated only with industry, arriving in the capital of the Southern Urals, are amazed at the discrepancy between their expectations and reality. Natural objects are organically inscribed in the urban landscape and turned into its virtues. Near the lakes, modern embankments and beaches are being built, which become a place of attraction for the citizens and guests of Chelyabinsk. On the embankments there are walking areas, recreation areas, bike paths, and skate parks. The beaches are generally the most modern, as in fashionable foreign resorts: with white sand, all beach attributes, cafes, sports grounds. A distinctive feature of the Chelyabinsk (and indeed the South Urals) lakes and beaches are yacht clubs. There are a lot of them, this sport is loved here.

By the way, in the same Chelyabinsk, in addition to lakes, there is also a river flowing throughout the city, including in the center. Now they are building a unique object for Russia – the longest single embankment system. And they will monitor the quality of water using modern technologies: they will install sensors that will automatically record the state of water and transmit information to the territorial information and analytical center. This is the question of how to monitor the state of reservoirs.

Of course, one cannot do without cleaning the coast and the surface of the water. In addition to subbotniks, in which active residents take part, the territories are serviced by public utilities, and water bodies are cleaned with the help of amphibious vehicles. There are a lot of scientific projects on water purification – both from scientists and from schoolchildren. All this helps to solve the problem.

By the way, the Chelyabinsk region itself, together with Karelia, Leningrad, Murmansk, Tver, Pskov and Novosibirsk regions, entered the top of the most lake regions of the country.