Kokaral Dam, Aral Sea, Republic of Kazakhstan
46° 4’ 51” N 60° 47’ 7.9” E
Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea was siphoned off by Soviet Union irrigation projects in the 1950’s. Although irrigation boosted agriculture production it devastated the Aral Sea. By 2009 the southeastern lake was dry and renamed the Aralkum desert. It was declared by the UN as “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters”. In 2005 a dam was built in an effort to save what is left of the northern portion. Uzbekistan is still draining water from one of the Aral Sea’s main river sources in order to maintain its global cotton industry.