Residents of Tehran may be forced to evacuate due to an unprecedented drought in Iran, prompted by record low levels of rainfall and empty reservoirs.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has told Iranian citizens that if rainfall remains scarce, they may be forced to ration water.
The forecast looks bleak across the country, with no rainfall expected over the next ten days, according to forecasters.
Iran’s Minister of Energy, Abbas Ali Abadi, has warned that authorities may soon be forced to cut water supplies. He said water flow may be “decreased to zero” on some nights, while households and business could be penalised for consuming too much water, the BBC reported.
Pezeshkian’s statement sparked criticism from Iranian newspapers and on social media. The former Mayor of Tehran, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, said that “evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all” and called the idea a “joke”.
Iran is enduring nationwide water shortages all across the country with 19 major dams – about 10% of the country’s reservoirs – running dry, according to the Iranian Water Resources Management Company. More than 16 million people in the country are in danger of their taps running dry, while local officials have said that rainfall in the capital is at its lowest level in a century.
Tehran currently holds less than 10 per cent of its water capacity, according to the manager of the Latian Dam, one of the capital’s main water sources.
Ali Abadi told the BBC that the water crisis in Tehran is not just a result of the lack of rainfall, but also water leakage from the capital’s century-old water infrastructure.
The minister also referenced the 12-day war with Israel, which included Israel targeting northern Tajrish on 15 June which caused heavy flooding. The IDF claimed it had targeted Iranian military “command centres”.
In the nearby Karaj Dam, rainfall has plummeted to 8 per cent which is a 92 per cent decrease compared to this time last year. Mohammad-Ali Moallem, the reservoir manager, said most of it is unusable and considered ‘dead water’.
Water levels have also plunged below 3 per cent in dams in Mashhad, a city in the north east with the second largest city by population, according to local reports.
The CEO of the city’s water company, Hossein Esmaeilian, told The Guardian: “The current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached about “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams” and urged citizens to reduce their consumption to 20 per cent to avoid supplies being cut.
Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned of a looming water crisis since 2011 but the situation has since worsened.
Source: independent.co.uk