Never Mind Why The Topic Came Up

It appears that over the weekend, while discussing Soviet environmental catastrophes with an Englishman, I committed an error.  Sorry Stephen, but the Soviets didn't dump nuclear waste on the island in the patch of land formerly known as the Aral Sea, but actually tested nuclear and biological weapons on it, which I guess is even worse than just regular nuclear waste.  So living near the dried-up sea sucks even worse than I thought since there has been plenty of time for both nuclear and biological toxins to traverse the land bridge that connects the former island to the mainland around what used to be the world's fourth largest lake.  (Go ahead and laugh at my confusing sentences.  You try to write something about a piece of land that used to be an inland sea and see how well you do with the usage of words like mainland and lake.)  Fortunately, however, the Aral Sea is currently making a comeback in places thanks to the efforts of some highly dedicated environmental engineers and the World Bank.  So not only will the nuclear and biological waste once again hopefully be isolated on the island, but locals might actually have a chance at producing some economic activity.  Now if only they could figure out exactly who owns the damn thing.