Water Behind Iran’s Dams ‘Only Meets Fall Season Needs’
The director general of the country’s water information and data office says the water behind Iran’s dams “only meets the fall season’s needs”.
Firouz Qasemzadeh said on Sunday, the 18th of Mehr, that rainfall has decreased by 37 percent compared to last year, and only 39 percent of our dams’ reservoirs across the country are full.
According to him, the storage capacity of Iran’s dams is 50 billion cubic meters, and the current amount stored in them is 19 billion cubic meters, of which only half, equivalent to 9.5 billion cubic meters, is usable, and the remaining reserves do not have suitable quality conditions.
He stated: “Due to predictions of low rainfall in the fall season, this figure could be concerning.”
Hoshanq Jazi, the director general of the country’s watershed management and soil conservation office, also said that in recent years, resource management has been limited to closing rivers and collecting limited water, while in these same dam constructions, failure to pay attention to upstream watersheds has caused rivers and wetlands to dry up and soil to enter dam reservoirs, making them unusable; such that 250 million cubic meters of soil have entered our dam reservoirs.
He said in years of heavy rainfall, we suffer losses due to floods and failure to store water, and in years of low rainfall, we face problems due to drought, which are largely due to failure to take timely action and management and supervisory defects.
This fall, unlike previous years when the country constantly faced a gas shortage, the crisis of water and electricity shortages has been added to the problems.
Javad Owji, Iran’s petroleum minister, again reported on Sunday a daily shortage of 200 million cubic meters of gas and the necessity of using large volumes of fuel oil in power plants.
Source: Radio Farda
