The
Irtysh River (
Russian ?????&_160;;
Kazakh Ertis / ???i?&_160;;
Tatar Cyrillic ?????,
Latin Irtes&_160;;
Chinese É'erqísi hé / ?????) is a
river in
Siberia and is the chief tributary of the
river Ob. Its name means White River. It is actually longer than the Ob to their confluence. Irtysh's main affluent is
Tobol River. The Ob-Irtysh form a major basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western
Siberia and the
Altay Mountains.
From its source as Kara-Irtysh (Black Irtysh) in the Mongolian Altay mountains in Xinjiang, China, Irtysh flows NW through Lake Zaysan, Kazakhstan until it meets the Ob near Khanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia, Russia after 4,248&_160;kilometres (2,640&_160;mi).
Passenger, freight boats and tankers navigate most of the river between April and October, when it is not frozen. Omsk is home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, and the largest river port in Western Siberia. Major hydroelectric plants at Ust-Kamenogorsk and Bakhtarminsk (1959) use the Irtysh near the Kazakhstan-Chinese border.
Some of the Northern river reversal proposals, widely discussed in the 1960-70s, would see the direction of the Irtysh flow reversed, the river being used to supply water to central Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. While these gigantic water management schemes were not implemented, a smaller Irtysh-Karaganda irrigation canal (Russian ????? ????? — ?????????) was built between 1962 and 1974 to supply water to the dry Kazakh Steppes, and to one of the country's main industrial centers, Karaganda. In 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.
