Kura (Caspian Sea) drained and reservoirs were created to facilitate development of irrigation in the lower Kura valley. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the Caucasus region was part of the Soviet Union, construction of many of the reservoirs and waterworks in the Kura basin began. Of the major reservoirs in the Kura catchment, one of the earliest was at Varvara in 1952. Large scale construction of dams continued until the 1970s. Kura (Caspian Sea) The Kura (; ; , "Mt’k’vari"; , "Kur"; , "Cyrus"; , "Kuruš" ) is an east-flowing river south of the Greater Caucasus Mountains which drains the southern slopes
Caspian Sea is the saline eastern inlet of the Caspian, which is part of Turkmenistan and at times has been a lake in its own right due to the isthmus that cuts it off from the Caspian. Differences between the three regions are dramatic. The Northern Caspian only includes the Caspian shelf, and is very shallow; it accounts for less than 1% of the total water volume with an average depth of only . The sea noticeably drops off towards the Middle Caspian, where the average depth is . The Southern Caspian is the deepest, with oceanic depths of over , greatly