Reversing One Of World's Worst Man-made Eco-Disasters

"Over the last half a century, the Aral Sea shrank to less than half its original size and turned salty as irrigation diversion slowly drained what was once one of the world's largest lakes. Like a gigantic amoeba, the landlocked sea divided in two in the late 1980s. The shrinkage not only wiped out a large fishing industry but blanketed the region with toxic saline dust blown up from the dry seabed.

Now, thanks to a new 8-mile-wide dam and other projects by the Kazakh government and the World Bank, the northern part of the Aral is filling again with fresh water. That in turn is restoring hope and a modest degree of prosperity to a region devastated by the double whammy of a disappearing sea and the Soviet collapse."