Carbonated water in the Chaek well. For now, this is the only well of its kind in the republic that has revealed water with increased CO2 content in a place where there were no serious grounds for such an expectation.
The well, according to the documentation of the Issyk-Kul hydrogeological party that drilled it in 1981, has the serial number 1202 and was established according to the project of geological and hydrogeological surveying of the Jumgal depression. The results of the work shed some light on the mystery that arose from the discovery of several unusual waters in a completely unexpected location.
Well 1202 is located 5 km southeast of the village of Chaek in the Kapchigay area, at the bottom of a depression. The temperature at the well's outlet, based on geophysical measurements, is 26.3°C, while due to cooling during movement through the borehole, it is 16°C. The self-flowing discharge is slightly less than 0.5 l/s, which can still be considered significant for mineral water.
With a dry residue of about 3 g/l, the water has a sodium bicarbonate-chloride composition with a noticeable presence of sulfate and magnesium ions, contains about 2 mg/l of hydrogen sulfide, which is quite unusual for carbonated waters in Kyrgyzstan, and 400 mg/l of free carbon dioxide (this is, as is known, only 100 mg/l less than what is required to classify the water as mineral carbonated). And surprisingly, the only component, aside from mineralization, that determined the balneological significance of the revealed water turned out to be metasilicic acid, which, according to some analyses, is present in an amount nearly twice that which is minimally required to classify the water as siliceous (94 mg/l).
The microcomponent composition of the water from well 1202 is quite ordinary, except for two unremarkable results: in the water from granites rich in silicic acid and not very cold, there is a relatively high amount of bromine (3 mg/l) and extremely low fluorine (less than 0.05 mg/l); such water has not been known in Kyrgyzstan until now, and there is no convincing scheme for its formation yet.
By the concentration and ratio of macrocomponents, the carbonated water from the Chaek well is almost a complete analogue of the Teply Serny spring No. 1 of the Pyatigorsk resort — there, the mineralization is close to 2.5 g/l, the carbon dioxide content is 0.2 g/l, and the temperature is 21°C. It is possible that further study of the Chaek water will establish even greater similarity in its composition and properties with that of Pyatigorsk, and then, perhaps, some residents of the Jumgal valley will no longer need to travel to the North Caucasus for health improvement.
