Kermanshah: Water Scarcity and Destroyed Environment
The expansive province of Kermanshah, with an area of 25,009 square kilometers—representing 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 of enemies, transforming into a barren, arid land devoid of water and vegetation. Kermanshah faces a dire water scarcity crisis, while the province’s environment has been devastated.
All the province’s rivers have dried up, and its springs have evaporated their last drops and disappeared. Seven major rivers in the province—Qarah Su, Razavar, Garab, Morg, Gamasiab, Dinor Ab, Simrah, and others—have all dried up. Of all the once beautiful and verdant springs in the province, nothing remains except cracked, desiccated earth at the bottom of the spring beds. Springs like Taghbestan, Khairallias, Yavari Spring, Khezerzaneh, and Nilofar Spring—once believed to be bottomless and connected to the boundless seas of the world, springs where locals believed Shiruyeh, the unfortunate son of Khosrow Parviz, had thrown the world-viewing cup of ancient Persia, never to be found—have now dried up, with dust and dirt rising from their beds into the air.
With the drying of the province’s rivers and springs, the major city of Kermanshah soon faces a dangerous crisis of drinking water shortage. Currently, a large portion of the city’s drinking water is supplied by the Gamishan Dam in Kamyaran, and if the dam’s water runs out, there will be no water for drinking in Kermanshah.
Throughout the province, there is no longer a single leafy tree under whose shade one can rest a weary body or find respite for even a moment. Except for small, scattered areas that have persisted, wherever the eye reaches, there is only the scorching heat of pyramids and desiccated, parched earth that dominates the landscape.
All this suffering and hardship has come to pass only through the hands of incompetent officials and unqualified, unprofessional managers who, through ignorance and irresponsibility, have brought ruin upon this province’s fate. They withheld its surface waters and, as much as they could, carelessly and recklessly depleted its underground water reserves for agricultural purposes, leaving its abundant natural forests unprotected and unmanaged. They removed from the table and consigned to oblivion all the carefully studied programs for the province’s future environmental conservation that had been considered before the Islamic Republic’s establishment to preserve the ecosystem. In the end, what should not have happened, happened. A land that, according to experts, will become uninhabitable within less than two decades. Although this situation has occurred or is occurring in many other provinces as well, Kermanshah province carries its own particular suffering and compounded problems.
Kermanshah Province on the Brink of Water Bankruptcy
The expansive province of Kermanshah, with a population of over two million people, was once one of the country’s relatively water-rich provinces with abundant fertile lands and plains. Due to the incompetence, ignorance, and political maneuvering of Islamic Republic government 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—what is referred to as the catastrophe of the century.
Over the past forty years, through incorrect planning and mismanagement stemming from poor judgment and discrimination among cities for political reasons, all the province’s surface waters—including seven rivers and dozens of springs and marshes—were diverted from the province. Its waters left the province, and instead, through the drilling of deep and semi-deep wells, both legal and illegal, all reserves of the province’s underground water resources were extracted over four decades. Kermanshah province has transformed into a region of dry, hollow lands and now stands on the brink of a major water crisis and land subsidence.
A Review of Kermanshah’s Water and Soil Situation
The Morg River in Sarfiruzabad, the Razavar in Kamyaran, the Garab in Rovansar, the Gamasiab in Bisotun, the Dinor Ab in Dinor, and the Qarah Su and Simrah in Kermanshah are seven major rivers that flowed through this province. All these rivers form the source of the great Karun River, which ultimately flows into the Hawizeh Marsh. These seven main rivers, along with numerous seasonal waterways, marshes, and hundreds of springs, had made the province verdant, flourishing, and vibrant.
Over the past four decades, despite precise scientific studies and ongoing plans for the proper and optimal use of surface waters for irrigating provincial lands—plans that considered the province’s water and soil outlook for decades to come—with the advent of the Islamic Republic system, all those efforts and scientific studies and rational planning were set aside. Unfortunately, the massive volume of water from each of the seven flowing rivers in the province, without a single drop being used within the province, was diverted to unknown destinations elsewhere. The government encouraged and incentivized farmers to drill deep and semi-deep wells and use underground water, and not stopping there, even supplied the drinking water for the province’s cities and villages from underground water reserves.
This resulted in Kermanshah province now facing, after forty years, an enormous and intractable water crisis and land subsidence, with farmers and herders in the province reduced to dire straits, continued and expanding migration from villages to cities, and cities facing a dangerous drinking water crisis.
The Fated Destiny of Garmab Dam on Kermanshah’s White Mountain
Before the Islamic Revolution, the establishment of a diversion dam to irrigate the large plains of Mahidasht—the province’s largest plain—Sarfiruzabad, Sanjabi, Guran, Qalkhani, and Rovansar, in the south and southeastern and southwestern parts of Kermanshah province had been studied, with over 25 percent of the dam’s construction work already completed. With the creation of this diversion dam, which was planned for a location called Tange Garmab on White Mountain, part of the Simrah’s water would have been directed to Sarfiruzabad Spring. Following the natural riverbed of the Morg River, after irrigating the plains of Sarfiruzabad, Mahidasht, Kozran, Sanjabi, Guran, Qalkhani, Rovansar, and others—totaling approximately 1,200 square kilometers—the water would naturally continue its course toward the Qarah Su River, flowing in a circular pattern so that not a drop would be wasted, with excess water returning to the main basin. This was considered one of the unique and incomparable projects in watershed management worldwide.
Unfortunately, with the advent of the Islamic Republic system, this very large and beneficial plan was abandoned. With the abandonment of this plan, new plans for controlling the major Simrah and Karun rivers were placed on the agenda of Islamic Republic governments. According to those plans, no basis was created for the people of Kermanshah province to use surface waters, and farmers were not allowed even minimal extraction from the seven aforementioned rivers. Meanwhile, the water from these rivers was entirely and systematically channeled through the Simrah River course; after passing through provincial lands and exiting the province, at least 18 small and large dams were constructed on the Simrah and Karun rivers. Most of these dams had defects and problems, and they damaged the ecosystem of their course completely for various reasons, creating complex and intractable difficulties.
In addition to this major project, plans for fencing natural resources and afforestation within the natural forests of this section of the Zagros to preserve and nurture the region’s natural ecosystem had been executed, covering extensive areas. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Islamic Republic, all these plans and programs were abandoned. The Garmab diversion dam project was forgotten, all fences were destroyed, their barbed wires were stolen, and newly grown saplings scattered throughout the vast oak forests were all lost. Shepherds grazed their herds in protected pastures and forests, and nothing called environmental protection and preservation remained.
The Pumps That Completely Emptied Underground Water Reserves Over Four Decades, Turning the Region into Wasteland
Instead of all those beneficial and studied plans, unfortunately the dangerous project of drilling deep and semi-deep wells and reckless exploitation of underground water reserves was placed on the agenda of Islamic Republic governments as a replacement. Based on this plan, deep and semi-deep wells, both legal and illegal, were drilled at scattered points throughout the province’s plains, and permission to use underground waters was increasingly granted.
Water motors worked day and night, and farmers, competing with one another, made every effort to extract as much underground water as possible without any supervision. Meanwhile, irrigation was being conducted in traditional ways, wastefully using tens of times more water. A decade or two later, semi-deep wells dried up, and this time permission for what was called “deepening” became common—farmers, encouraged by the government and given loans, drilled deeper wells to extract the last remaining drops of underground water from the earth’s depths. Continuing this process, now after four decades, neither water remains in the rivers nor in even deep wells, and in some areas of the province, no water at all—whether surface or underground—remains.
The vast oak forests have become parched, and not a trace remains of the abundant fruit orchards that once existed in the province. This process continues advancing toward other regions. Over 80 percent of the province’s traditional livestock operations have been destroyed due to the loss of pastures and forests and the lack of water and fodder for animals, with the remaining ones taking their last breaths. Meanwhile, all industrial livestock operations in the province have gone bankrupt due to incorrect planning and the uncalculated, ever-increasing inflation and price rises in the country, with their owners either fleeing due to bank debts or being sent to prison.
Currently, after more than forty years of this chaos, what remains for the province is scorching heat, land aridity, and other harsh and destructive phenomena that continue to deepen the profound environmental catastrophe in the region and consequently the human catastrophe with each passing day.
The flood of migrations toward cities from areas where water has run out and no shelter for temporary residence remains has been ongoing for a long time and is expanding to such a degree that it will not be long before all villages in Kermanshah province are emptied of inhabitants.
Source: Hrana
