Kermanshah: Water Scarcity and Destroyed Environment
The vast province of Kermanshah, spanning 25,009 square kilometers—equivalent to one and a half percent of the country’s total area—has over the past 42 years been plundered and ravaged as if by the cruelest enemy, transformed into a barren, waterless, and lifeless land. Kermanshah faces a severe water crisis, and this problem is compounded by the destruction of the province’s environment.
All of the province’s rivers have dried up, and its springs have evaporated their last drops and disappeared. Seven major rivers in the province—Qarehsoo, Razavor, Garab, Morg, Gamasiyab, Dinor Ab, and Simreh—have all dried up. From the once-beautiful and lush springs that existed in the province, nothing remains except cracked, parched earth at the bottom of these dried riverbeds. Springs such as Taghbostan, Kheiraliass, Yavari Spring, Khezerzaneh, and Nilofar Spring—which were once believed to have no end and to connect to the boundless seas of the world, springs where locals believed the legendary Cup of Jamshid of ancient Persia was cast by Shirouyeh, son of Khosrow Parviz, and was never found—have now dried up, with dust rising from their beds into the air.
With the drying of the rivers and springs of the province and the metropolis of Kermanshah, the city will soon face the dangerous crisis of drinking water shortage. Currently, a significant portion of the city’s drinking water is supplied by the Gamishan Dam in Kamyaran, and if the dam’s water supply runs out, there will be no drinking water in Kermanshah.
Across the entire province, there is no longer a single sturdy tree with foliage where one can find shade to rest one’s weary body for a moment. Except for a few small areas that have so far endured, wherever the eye reaches, there are pyramids of scorching heat and parched, cracked earth that assault the landscape.
All this suffering has resulted from the incompetence of officials and unqualified, non-specialist managers who, through negligence and irresponsibility, have brought ruin to this province’s fate. They withheld its surface waters and exhausted its groundwater aquifers without restraint for agricultural purposes, left its abundant natural forests unprotected, and discarded all the planned environmental programs for the province’s future that had been drawn up before the Islamic Republic came to power to preserve the ecosystem. Thus occurred what should never have happened—a land where, according to experts, life will become impossible within less than two decades. Though this situation has occurred or is occurring in many other provinces of the country, Kermanshah province carries its own particular suffering and compounded problems.
Kermanshah Province on the Brink of Water Bankruptcy
Kermanshah province, with a population of over two million people, was once one of the relatively water-rich provinces with extensive fertile lands and plains. However, due to the incompetence, negligence, and political maneuvering of Islamic Republic officials in dealing with water, soil, and environmental issues over the past four decades, the province has now transformed into a dry, parched region on the verge of water bankruptcy and land subsidence—a phenomenon referred to as the catastrophe of the century.
Over the past forty years, through faulty planning and mismanagement resulting from poor governance and political discrimination between cities, all of the province’s surface waters—comprising seven rivers, dozens of springs, and mirage-like water sources—were withheld from the province. Its waters were diverted out of the province, and instead, through the drilling of deep and semi-deep wells, both legal and illegal, all underground water aquifer reserves were extracted over four decades. Kermanshah province was transformed into a region of dry, empty lands and now faces the brink of a major water crisis and land subsidence.
A Review of Kermanshah’s Water and Soil Situation
The rivers Morg in Sarfirozabad, Razavor in Kamyaran, Garab in Rovansar, Gamsiyab in Bisotun, Dinor Ab in Dinor, Qarehsoo, and Simreh in Kermanshah are seven major rivers that flowed in this province, and all of these rivers form the source of the great Karun River, which ultimately flows into the Hawizeh Marsh. These seven major rivers, along with numerous seasonal rivers, marshes, and hundreds of springs, once made the province verdant, flourishing, and vibrant.
Over the past four decades, despite the fact that precise scientific studies and planned projects for the rational and optimal use of surface waters for irrigation of the province’s lands had been studied and programmed, taking into account the province’s water and soil prospects for coming decades, with the advent of the Islamic Republic system, all these efforts and scientific studies and rational planning were set aside. Unfortunately, the heavy volume of water from the seven flowing rivers in the province was diverted without a single drop being used within the province, directed toward unknown and unclear destinations. The government apparatus encouraged and incentivized farmers in the province to drill deep and semi-deep wells and use underground waters, and did not stop at that—it even supplied drinking water to the province’s cities and villages from underground water aquifer sources.
This caused that after forty years have passed, Kermanshah province now faces an immense and intractable water crisis and land subsidence, and farmers and herders in the province have been left destitute, migration from villages to cities continues and expands, and cities face the dangerous crisis of water shortage.
The Inevitable Fate of Garmab Dam on the White Mountain of Kermanshah
Before the Islamic Revolution, a diversion dam was designed to irrigate the great plains of Mahidasht, the largest plain in the province, as well as Sarfirozabad, Sanjabi, Guran, Qalkhani, and Rovansar plains in the south, southeast, and southwest of Kermanshah province, and more than 25 percent of the dam’s implementation had been completed. With the construction of this diversion dam, which was planned to be built in an area called Tange Garmab on the White Mountain, part of the Simreh’s water would be diverted to Sarfirozabad Spring, and by flowing along the natural course of the Morg River, after irrigating the plains of Sarfirozabad, Mahidasht, Kuzran, Sanjabi, Guran, Qalkhani, Rovansar, and others—a total area of approximately 1,200 square kilometers—the water would continue its natural course toward Qarehsoo River and flow in a circular pattern so that not a drop of water would be wasted, and excess waters would return to the main basin. This was considered one of the most unique and exceptional watershed management projects in the world.
With the advent of the Islamic Republic system, unfortunately this large and beneficial project was set aside. With the abandonment of this project, new plans for controlling the flow of the great Simreh and Karun rivers were placed on the agenda of Islamic Republic governments. Based on those plans, no framework was created for the people of Kermanshah province to utilize surface waters, and farmers in the province were not permitted to draw even the minimum amount from the waters of the aforementioned seven rivers. Meanwhile, the water of these rivers was generally and systematically diverted along the course of the Simreh River, and after passing through the province’s lands and exiting from them, at least eighteen small and large dams were constructed on the Simreh and Karun rivers. Most of these dams have defects and problems, and in various ways have caused the ecosystem of their course complex and intractable difficulties.
Beyond this major project, plans for fencing off the province’s natural resources and afforestation within the natural forests of this section of the Zagros to maintain and develop the natural ecosystem of the region were also implemented and had covered vast areas. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Islamic Republic, all these projects and plans were set aside. The Garmab diversion dam project was forgotten, all fencing was destroyed and barbed wires stolen, young seedlings in the vast oak forests were lost, shepherds herded their flocks into protected pastures and forests, and nothing called environmental protection remained.
Pumps That Over Four Decades Completely Depleted Underground Water Aquifers and Reduced the Region to Desolation
Instead of all those useful and studied plans, unfortunately the dangerous project of drilling deep and semi-deep wells and the reckless exploitation of underground water aquifers became the agenda of Islamic Republic governments and replaced previous initiatives. Based on this approach, deep and semi-deep wells, both legal and illegal, were drilled throughout the province’s plains, and increasingly permission was given to exploit underground waters.
Water motors operated day and night around the clock, and farmers, competing with each other, made all efforts to extract as much underground water as possible without any oversight. Meanwhile, irrigation was also done in a traditional manner, wastefully using dozens of times more water than necessary. One or two decades later, the semi-deep wells dried up, and this time so-called “well deepening” became permissible to drill deeper wells. Farmers, encouraged by the government, took loans and dug deep wells to pump out the last remaining drops of underground water from the depths of the earth. In continuation of this process, now after four decades have passed, neither water remains in the rivers nor in even the deepest wells, and in some parts of the province, no water of any kind—whether surface or underground—remains.
Large oak forests have become arid, and nothing remains of the abundant fruit orchards that once existed in the province. This process is moving toward other regions. More than 80 percent of the traditional livestock farms that existed in the province have been destroyed due to the loss of pastures and forests and the absence of water and fodder for their animals, and the remaining ones are breathing their last breaths. Meanwhile, all industrial livestock farms in the province have gone bankrupt due to faulty planning and the rapid and unaccounted growth of inflation and price increases in the country, and their owners have either fled due to bank debts or been imprisoned.
At present, and after more than forty years of this chaos, what remains for the province is scorching heat, dry lands, and other harsh and destructive phenomena that continue to deepen the environmental and consequently human catastrophe in the region day by day.
The flood of migration toward cities from areas where water has run out and where no shelter remains for temporary settlement has been ongoing for some time and is expanding so rapidly that it will not be long before all of Kermanshah’s villages are emptied of their inhabitants.
Source: Hrana
