A deep water well with a depth of 3,000 meters has been drilled in Sistan-Baluchestan Province and another is being drilled, a Zabol lawmaker said.
“Fifteen such wells will be drilled in the province and $16 million has been allocated to this end,” IRNA quoted Habibollah Dahmardeh as saying.
Extracting water from the wells will augment sustainable supplies to the water-stressed province in the southeast.
Perpetual drought has been accompanied by a dangerous decline in rainfall this year worsening the water crisis in Sistan-Baluchestan.
According to the provincial Meteorological Organization, since the beginning of the current water year (Sept 2020), only 5.2 mm of rainfall was registered in the region -- the lowest in half a century. It is down 62% compared to the previous lowest record, which was 13.8 mm in 2003.
On average, about 60 mm of rain falls annually in autumn and winter in the southeast region, and winter is the rainiest season with more than 50% of annual rainfall. However, in winter of the current water year, precipitation reached 0.4 mm, the lowest in 50 years.
Dahmardeh said lab tests in and outside Iran show the water extracted from the deep well is safe and can be used for drinking.
Tapping Sea of Oman
He supported the scheme to transfer water from the Oman Sea as “another plan to help address the water shortage” in the parched region.
Although experts strongly oppose inter-basin water transfers as environmentally hazardous and destructive, the government has said the costly water transfer from the Oman Sea is the last resort. Such initiatives, however, are highly costly and take years while drilling deep wells are less expensive and take much less time.
The first well drilled at 3,000 meters in the region is an artesian well and water from such wells flow without pumping. Moving water from the Oman Sea needs desalination units costing $1.6 billion and at least three years to complete.
“In the past, Hirmand (also known as Helmand) River in Afghanistan, supplied water to the eastern regions. But after building dams over the river, the Kabul government stopped the water flow to Iran,” Dahmardeh said.
The outcome is that people in the southeastern regions have been grappling with water and food problems as their livelihood for centuries depended largely on farming and animal husbandry. With long and severe water shortages, unusually large numbers lost their jobs and started migrating to bigger cities.
Iran and Afghanistan signed a treaty in 1973 that says Iran's share from Helmand is 22 cubic meters per second.
Reportedly, the treaty was to the detriment of Iran because not only did it recognize all dams and canals that the Afghans built on the shared basin, it also reduced Iran’s annual water right to as low as 800 million cubic meters (less than 10% of the river’s annual water flow). The result has been that in the past two decades the part of Helmand River inside Iran is dry for almost 10 months a year.
“This should be considered as one of the causes of the drought in the southeast,” Dahmardeh said.
