ABSTRACT
Water resources in the USSR are being transformed profoundly under the impact of economic activity. Basic social, technical, and economic changes are realized in the interest of improvement of the human environment and of a more effective use of natural resources. The river runoff within the USSR, including the inflow from the territories of adjoining countries, amounts, on the average, to 4,714 km3 a year. It would seem that with such resources the needs of the country's economy for water should be fully satisfied. Local water resources cannot meet all the requirements of the future economy of the southern USSR, especially those of irrigated agriculture. The creation of regulating water bodies in the river estuaries within the basins of the Karsk, Barents, White, and Baltic seas, and the use of natural sea bays, their waters transferred to south, would make it possible to preserve natural hydrological regime of the river systems and to do without additional reservoirs in plains terrain.
