TEHRAN: Iranian officials have sounded the alarm over a looming water crisis in the capital, warning that the main reservoir supplying Tehran could run dry within two weeks.
The Amir Kabir Dam, which provides drinking water to millions, currently holds just eight percent of its capacity due to a historic drought and a 100 percent drop in regional precipitation, the director of the capital’s water company, Behzad Parsa, was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency on Sunday. With daily consumption reaching three million cubic metres, water shortages and rationing are already disrupting life across the megacity of over 10 million residents.
The state media said the cause of the running of dry was the historic drought plaguing the country.
A year ago, the Amir Kabir dam held back 86 million cubic metres of water, Parsa said, but there had been a “100 percent drop in precipitation” in the Tehran region. Parsa did not provide details on the status of the other reservoirs in the system. The megacity of more than 10 million people is nestled against the southern slopes of the often-snow-capped Alborz Mountains, which soar as high as 5,600 metres (18,370 feet) and whose rivers feed multiple reservoirs.
According to Iranian media, the population of Tehran consumes around three million cubic metres of water each day. As a water-saving measure, supplies have reportedly been cut off to several neighborhoods in recent days, while outages were frequent this summer. In July and August, two public holidays were declared to save water and energy, with power cuts an almost daily occurrence amid a heatwave that saw temperatures rise beyond 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Tehran and exceed 50C (122F) in some areas.
“The water crisis is more serious than what is being discussed today,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned at the time. Water scarcity is a major issue throughout Iran, particularly in arid provinces in the country’s south, with shortages blamed on mismanagement and overexploitation of underground resources, as well as the growing impact of climate change.
