Water infrastructure in Central Asia consists of hundreds of reservoirs, dams, irrigation systems and pumping stations, a lot of channels and tens of multi-purpose waterworks facilities. There is the world’s highest rockfill dam – Nurek with height of 300 meters on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan, and there is also one of the longest canals in the world – the Karakum-River stretching over 1,100 kilometers, which delivers to Turkmenistan about half the water received from transboundary Amudarya river used in the country.
Large dams in Central Asia play essential role in the water infrastructure. According to the classification of the International Commission on Large Dams (MKPBP) they include a dam height of 15 meters and above, and also the dam of 5 to 15 meters, forming a reservoir of at least 3 million cubic meters storage. 110 dams are classified as large among more than 1,200 ones in the region. Many of these dams are located in the transboundary river basins, such as the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, Ili, Irtysh, and have inter-state status.