81% of the country's dam capacity filled; Qazvin Dam overflows
The head of the country's dam operation group announced that 81 percent of the country's dam capacity has been filled and said that the inflow into the country's dams was 68 billion cubic meters, which is four times the same time last water year.
On Saturday, May 12, Vahid Askarinejad stated that the amount of water stored in the country's dam reservoirs is 41 billion cubic meters, and said that the total capacity of the country's dams is 50 billion cubic meters.
About 60 percent of all water entering the country's dams enters Khuzestan Province.
Recent significant rainfall caused flooding in parts of the country, especially the provinces of Golestan and Khuzestan, which, in addition to killing about 80 Iranian citizens, caused huge financial losses.
Meanwhile, Gholamreza Shariati, the governor of Khuzestan, announced on Saturday that Iraq has agreed to allow part of the Khuzestan floodwaters to enter the Tigris River.
He said that the Iraqi government has also tacitly agreed to allow the Khuzestan floodwaters to enter the Iraqi part of the Hur al-Azim wetland, but has rejected Iran's request to allow water to enter the Adab River and direct it towards the Arvand River.
Reports also indicate that the Taleghan Dam in Qazvin is overflowing and the Karaj Dam is approaching saturation level due to heavy rainfall and melting ice.
Davud Najafian, CEO of the Alborz Provincial Regional Water Company, told Mehr News Agency on Saturday that the overflow of the Taleghan Dam will likely continue for two weeks.
The CEO of East Azerbaijan Regional Water has also said that there is a possibility that the Aras Dam will overflow in the coming days.
The director of the provincial office of the Urmia Lake Restoration Headquarters in West Azerbaijan announced that the lake's water volume has exceeded 5 billion cubic meters and said that its volume will continue to increase in the coming days. He went on to say that about 1.5 billion cubic meters of this figure has been released into the lake since the beginning of Farvardin alone.
According to him, the level of Lake Urmia on May 11 is close to 1,272 meters and its area is 3,180 square kilometers.
Askari Nejad, head of the country's dam operation group at the Iranian Water Resources Management Company, says that out of 178 dams in operation, 86 are more than 90 percent full and 30 percent have less than their water storage capacity.
He added that the inflow into the country's dams in just Farvardin 2019 was greater than the total water inflow into the dams in 2018-2019, which is an indication of the magnitude of the floods.
Iran has been facing a drought crisis for years, but recent floods and increased dam reserves apparently will not help solve the crisis.
Sahar Taj Bakhsh, head of the Meteorological Organization, said on April 15 that "the drought in Iran is still ongoing." It cannot be said that the country has entered a wet period.
Source: Radio Farda
