A water treatment plant in Malayer County, Hamedan Province, will start in February to provide water to the western county from Kalan Dam, managing director of the provincial Regional Water Company said.
“Twenty seven wells supply water to Malayer,” Mansour Sotoudeh said, adding that the new facility will supply 12 million cubic meters of drinking water from the dam to 330,000 people, the Energy Ministry news portal Paven reported him as saying.
“Kalan Dam can hold 45 million cubic meters of water and currently has 41 mcm,” Sotoudeh said. Built on Haram-Abad River, the dam is the largest in western Hamedan Province.
The plant is designed to meet the needs of Malayer, nearby villages, farms and Sahand Industrial Town. Moreover, 5.5 mcm will go for preserving the environment. It will treat 380 liters of water per second and cost $8 million. Water will be transferred via a 38-km pipeline from Kalan Dam to Malayer.
Another dam was launched recently to help farmers in the region. With a capacity to hold 4.6 million cubic meters of water, Nematabad Dam was built on Shahab River costing $3.2 million and provides water for 450 hectares of farmlands. The dam is north of Nematabad, a village in Asadabad County.
Due to chronic shortage of surface water, farmers in the province resort to groundwater from illegally-dug deep wells. The government has started sealing unauthorized wells to conserve the rapidly depleting resource and discourage the harmful practice of digging and using illegal wells.
Of the 7,300 illegal wells in the province, about 4,000 were sealed in the past five years and helped save 268 million cubic meters of water. The move also helps maintain a semblance of stability in groundwater levels that are in sharp decline.
Hamedan is Iran’s fifth grape producer after Fars, Qazvin, Khorasan Razavi and West Azarbaijan. Other agricultural products in the province include tomatoes, potatoes, watermelon and seeds.
Building dams and wastewater treatment plants are among measures taken to help increase the large farming community’s access to water.
