All commercial fishing ended in 1982, current fish hauls are negligible, and entire fishing communities are now unemployed. Former seashore villages and towns are 70 km away from the present shoreline. The exposed seabed consists of vast salt tracts, whose sand and dust, polluted with pesticides, are carried by the wind up to a distance of 250 km at an estimated rate of 15 to 75 million tonnes a year. The AGL study says that, with the reduction of the Aral Sea's size, the surrounding climate has changed, becoming more continental with shorter, hotter, rainless summers and longer, colder, snowless winters. The growing season has been reduced to an average of 170 days a year, while dust storms rage on more than 90 days annually.
Communities face appalling health problems.
Not surprisingly, the infant mortality rate is one of the world's highest. Regional water strategy . As early as the 1982, the government sought to develop a water resources master plan for the Syr Darya and Amu Darya river basins and placed strict limits on water withdrawal. Soon after, two basin water organizations were created to operate and maintain the main hydraulic infrastructures and to monitor water use. With the end of the Soviet period, five newly independent Central Asian states established a joint commission for water coordination to regulate water distribution in the basin and consolidate country positions for the adoption of a regional water strategy.