Water is supplied to the reservoirs through the Gudiskaya Canal of the Terek River. The water intake from this large canal comes through the Zenkovsky, Zhdanovsky and Sirazhudinovsky canals, which are all under the jurisdiction of the Tersko-Caspian branch of Glavrybvod Federal State Budgetary Enerprise. Due to the flood of the Terek River in July 2016, these canals were almost completely filled with silt.

Over the past five years, the Tersko-Caspian branch has organized measures to clean these channels. As a result, more than 1 million cubic meters of soil were cleared. However, these measures were not enough to ensure the filling of the reservoirs. In June 2021, Rosrybolovstvo (The Federal Agency for Fishery - federal executive body responsible for: control in fisheries and conservation of marine biological resources in Russia), together with representatives of the regional authorities of the Republic of Dagestan, decided to partially clean the Gudiyskaya channel of the Terek in order to normalize water supply to the spawning and breeding reservoirs.

As to Omar Mikailov, the First Deputy Head of the Tersko-Caspian Branch of the Glavrybvod FSBI, the Gudiyskaya canal was cleared over a 11.3-kilometre stretch, from its starting point to the intake structures of the Zenkovsky, Zhdanovsky and Sirazhudinovsky water supply canals. A total of about 800,000 cubic metres of silt were removed. Twelve excavators, 25 dump trucks and 3 bulldozers were used in the canal clearing operations.

“As a result, we managed to extract enormous volumes of soil and construct a canal with a length of approximately 11 kilometers from the beginning of the Shavinskoye spillway to the last water intake structure. The canal has a water flow rate of 75 cubic meters per second, with a width ranging from 25 to 51 meters and a depth of approximately 1.5 to 2 meters. The measures to clear the Gudiyskaya channel of the Terek River have now been completed. Water has flowed into the canals and they are now transporting it to spawning and nursery ponds. These reclamation works have helped the branch's experts to restore water supply and the normal hydrological conditions of the Arakum and Nizhne-Tere breeding and rearing reservoirs, thereby preserving a valuable breeding area” - Rashid Ismailov, Chairman of the Russian Ecological Society says.

Specialists are convinced that reclamation works on water bodies should be carried out in a systematic manner and on a permanent basis. In this way, it is possible to achieve almost complete restoration of aquatic bioresources of the Russian Federation and enhance the efficiency of the works.

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