Ilham Aliyev reviewed work to improve ecology of Boyukshor Lake and environs

President Ilham Aliyev has reviewed the work under way to comprehensively restore the ecology of Boyukshor Lake and its adjacent territories.

A series of major infrastructure projects will be implemented in Baku in connection with the holding in Azerbaijan in June 2015 of the first ever European Games. The comprehensive restoration of the ecology of Boyukshor Lake and its environs is one of them. The majority of events of the first ever European Games will be held on the eastern shore of Boyukshor Lake, in the Baku Olympic Stadium complex which is currently under construction. This is the territory that will receive the many guests, sportsmen and women and tourists. The comprehensive restoration of the ecology of Boyukshor Lake and its environs is of great importance from this point of view. In this connection, it is planned to complete the first phase of the works before the Games begin.

Minister for the Economy and Industry Shahin Mustafayev briefed the head of state on the work which is to be carried out.

It was noted that it is planned to improve the ecology of Boyukshor Lake and to protect it within the framework of a plan of measures to improve the ecology of nine lakes of the Absheron peninsula under the State Programme for the Socio-Economic Development of the City of Baku and its Suburbs in 2014-2016. The project to restore the ecology of the lake will be implemented in two phases. An area of almost 300 ha of the lake near where the Olympic Stadium is being built will be restored in the first phase in 2014-2015. This phase envisages the separation from the shoreline and its isolation from it by means of a dam of the northern part of the historically oil-polluted sector of the lake. This will act as a barrier to oil, polluted waters and floating waste. The dam, which is designed as a six-lane highway and which marks the western boundaries of the territory, will link Ziya Buniyatov Avenue on one side and the Balahani – Binagadi Highway on the other. This in turn will ease traffic on the city’s road infrastructure. The road at the lake sector will be 1570 metres long in total. Waste water will be prevented from emptying into the lake and water polluted during treatment will be directed to the Hovsan Aeration Station. It is planned to cleanse the lake of polluted sediment and to make it safe and also to eliminate sectors around the lake where waste has been illegally discharged. A barrier to waste water will be raised completely on the southern shore of the lake where wide-scale landscaping and other improvement work will be carried out and a park and green belts will be created. A waste water conduit will be built towards the stadium to prevent the lake from being polluted. It is envisaged that a promenade and also a crossing to the stadium territory will be built along the shoreline.

The second phase of the complete restoration of Boyukshor Lake will take place in 2015-2020. The lake will thereby be returned to its natural historical state, the water level will be regulated and the ecosystem will be restored. International specialists rate Boyukshor Lake as one of the most complexly polluted lakes in the world. The presence in the State Programme for the Socio-Economic Development of the City of Baku and its Suburbs in 2014-2016 of a plan of measures to restore the lake is proof of the consistency of the work being carried out by the Azerbaijani state for sustained economic development, to protect citizens’ health, resolve their social issues and improve the ecological situation.

President Ilham Aliyev called the comprehensive ecological restoration of Boyukshor Lake and its adjacent territories an historic project and went on to praise its ecological importance. He then issued appropriate instructions and recommendations.