In the past three months, drinking water has been supplied to 549 villages with a population of 355,000 people, according to the data provided by the Energy Ministry.
Currently, over 83% of Iran’s rural population have access to piped water. This is while the entire urban population is linked to the water supply network, the ministry’s news portal Paven reported.
“Measures have been taken to provide funds to address water issues in 10,000 villages across Iran. It has been planned to solve the water shortage problems of rural areas within three years,” Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian said.
“Some villages do not have a water supply network, which need to be established, but in some other villages, we need to reconsider the water supply resources using various methods of transmission.”
Paven also reported that in the past 100 days, 1,604 agricultural wells were equipped with smart meters.
In a bid to help reduce water consumption in the farming sector, which gobbles up a huge volume of water nationwide, smart meters have been installed on water wells and the number of such meters across the country has surpassed 84,000.
Equipping wells with the new system will help utility companies closely monitor water use online and prevent excessive withdrawal from authorized wells in the farming sector.
Measures have been taken by the Energy Ministry to provide funds to address water issues in 10,000 villages across Iran
Smart wells are advanced structures with sensors and valves installed downhole to allow easy and systematic monitoring.
The injudicious use and waste of groundwater from legal and illegal wells have emerged as a major problem in Iran's struggle against the water crisis that has gotten worse over the past half century as precipitation declines and consumption rises.
Iran's annual water consumption exceeds 100 billion cubic meter, which is not acceptable by both regional and international norms, meaning people should be more conscious about the value of the precious resource.
Thousands of illegal wells used by farmers for agriculture have been identified and closed across Iran in the past few years. Restrictions on the use of surface and groundwater resources have also been imposed by the government to help preserve the precious but rapidly dwindling resource.
The steep decline in groundwater levels is having devastating consequences. Excessive pumping is harming groundwater tables and stopping wells from reaching the groundwater. When groundwater is overused, lakes, streams and rivers connected to groundwater also start diminishing and vanish as time passes.
