This article is about the filling of the reservoir. For the coming flooding, see Raising the Water Level in the Cheboksary Hydroelectric Power Plant Reservoir

As a result of the first rise of the Cheboksary Reservoir, thousands of hectares of fertile land and forest were flooded in Mari El. Dozens of settlements had to be resettled.

For local residents the rise of the water came as a shock: in the morning they left for work and school, and by evening they could not get back home. The forced resettlement from houses into multi-storey blocks was hardest on the older generation: very soon many of them had been buried, while their peers who stayed in villages lived on to the age of 80.

In environmental terms, the creation of the reservoir sharply worsened water quality. The main reason was that the reservoir was built on a lowland river merely to tick off the last box in the cascade of hydroelectric plants. Another reason was insufficient clearing of the forest, both in what was actually done and in what had been planned. In places the clearing was carried out over the ice, after the reservoir had already been filled. Another environmental "victory" of engineering was the flooding of oak groves — habitats of species listed in the Red Data Book. In the Kerzhensky Nature Reserve, signs of reverse succession of bog ecosystems (a raised bog turning into a transitional one) began to be observed at a distance of more than 10 km from the Volga and the Kerzhenets. This is evidence of insufficient study of the Cheboksary Reservoir's impact on the environment and of a substantial underestimation, by the design organization, of the scale of the impact of the rise in the reservoir's level — by whose estimates the flooding would supposedly not extend beyond 2-3 kilometers from the reservoir.

The negative economic consequences consisted in taking some of the most productive and settled land out of crop rotation. The area of forestry enterprises was also significantly reduced.

The dams built in the Vorotynsky, Lyskovsky, and Pilninsky districts, where the level of the Volga was raised by 8-9 meters in 1979, disfigured the banks of the Volga and the Sura, but did not protect the meadows from the rise of groundwater and waterlogging. Lands that, according to the project, were supposed to be protected from the reservoir became waterlogged and became unfit for use in agriculture.

On the miscalculations. As 30 years of recent history have shown, the residents of Mari El do not agree with the design institutes either in their assessments of water quality or in their assessments of the flooding boundaries.

Residents' recollections

— I was born in the workers' settlement of Dubovaya, which was almost completely flooded, — recounts a resident of Kozmodemyansk, Lyudmila Gordeeva. — Before the hydroelectric plant was launched we were told electricity would become cheaper. Nothing of the sort. Instead now, in the lower part of the town, every cellar and basement has water in it. And this has been going on for years now.

— What water meadows and lakes we used to have! — recalls Marina Degteva. — And what berries we used to gather! Father salted fish by the crate — there was sterlet, there was pikeperch. The fish soup back then can't be compared to today's, which smells of silt. Now there are marshes everywhere. Water lilies bloom on the Volga. And how many villages went under water. On the left bank, people even put up a monument to their villages, from which they were driven out. And it's a pity about Kozmodemyansk too. It's such a beautiful town…

— Using the 63-meter mark as an example, we've already understood how many mistakes were made, — sums up the town's mayor, Vladimir Toropov. — After all, practically a third of the republic was flooded. Just one example: a settlement standing on a steep bluff was not supposed to fall within the reservoir's zone. But the water reached it from the other side — from the forest. The lower part of the town has long been waterlogged. It is impossible to lay utility lines or build houses — the groundwater is too close. Houses are decaying and falling apart. School graduates are fleeing the town. Their parents are leaving to find work in Cheboksary and Moscow…

Many years ago, when the flooding of villages and settlements began, Father Ioann refused to leave his village, went out to the bank of the Volga and began to pray. The great water swept away everything in its path. But here it stopped… Now the village has only four households left. And the priest still serves there.

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