Rioni River

The Rioni in Kutaisi

Template: Infobox River / NACHWEISE_aus

The Rioni ( Georgia რიონი ) is Georgia's third largest river.

History and use

The river is 327 km long, originates on the southwest slope of the Greater Caucasus in Svaneti. It first flows through the region Racha - Letschchumi and Niederswanetien mostly as a wild raging mountain river reaches in Imereti lowland and crosses the Colchian lowlands on the border between Samegrelo and Guria west to the Black Sea. At its mouth at Poti, it forms a marshy river delta. The banks of the Rioni are characterized by lush vegetation and forest wealth.

The upper and middle reaches is used for electricity production: The hydropower plant cascade is Warziche with a capacity of 184 megawatts ( MW) is the third largest producer of electricity in Georgia. The government is planning the construction of additional hydropower plants on the Rioni: Namachwani (250 MW) and Schoneti (100 MW). In the lower reaches of the Great Plain, the river was dammed to the Soviet period, straightened and supplemented with an extensive canal system to irrigate the subtropical agriculture.

Hydroelectric plant on the Rioni at Kutaisi

World map of Anaximander with the Rioni as Phasis

History

The Greeks called the river Phasis ( Φάσις ). Already Hesiod mentions him in the Theogony. A detailed description can be found even in pseudo - Hippocrates (over the air, the waters and the locations ), and later in Apollonius of Rhodes, Vergil and Aelius Aristides. Hecataeus of Miletus was assumed that the Phasis Black and Caspian Sea Association.

The river was v. early as the 7th century AD is of great importance. He joined the Greek port city of Phasis (now Poti ) at the river mouth with Kutaia (now Kutaisi ) on the middle reaches of the river. Ships transported grain, metal, wine, olives and ceramics.

The huge, inaccessible by extensive swamps hinterland of the city of Poti was notorious since antiquity as disease- risk region (malaria, malaria ). Only in the 20th century projects were implemented to drain with tremendous effort.

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