To ease water shortages in southern Hormozgan Province, supply of desalinated water to Salakh rural district on Qeshm Island has increased fourfold to reach 1,200 cubic meters per day, deputy managing director of the provincial Water and Wastewater Company said.
"Desalination plants in the region, which annually produce 47 million cubic meters of potable water, meet 26% of the total demand. Wells and dams account for 74%," Ahmad Shakeri was quoted as saying by the Energy Ministry news portal.
Output rose in Salakh after expansion of the desalination plant.
“Up until March, 4,000 residents of the region were supplied water via tankers. Now that has ended.”
Similar to other provinces, underground resources are drying up rapidly in Hormozgan and tapping into unconventional water resources, namely saline water, has become a pressing need.
Referring to water plans for the region, he said work on the second phase of Sirik desalination unit, off the Sea of Oman, was completed by the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran (Abfa) and it will double the current desalination capacity at 2,000 cubic meters per day.
A water desalination unit was completed in the village of Ziarat in the central district of Bandar Lengeh. Using reverse osmosis technology, the plant went on stream in 2020 and supplies 3,000 cubic meters of water a day.
As the going gets tough and economic pressures pile up rural folks are migrating in bigger numbers leaving in their wake abandoned and uninhabitable villages. Expanding Bandar Abbas desalination infrastructure can slow the migration and contribute to sustainable rural development in the dry regions, Shakeri stressed, echoing the concerns of prominent economic experts and teachers of developmental studies.
Hormozgan has a population of 1.6 million but only one million have access to services of the provincial water company. The hot coastal region has 17 desalination units producing 130,000 cubic meters of water a day.
Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian says the fledgling domestic desalination industry can and should meet the need for potable water in the Persian Gulf littoral provinces.
Iran (with desalination plants) produces 420,000 cubic meters of freshwater per day, or 153 million cubic meters per annum.
Persian Gulf Arab states’ demand for desalinated water has increased by 9-11% in recent years, according to Frost & Sullivan, a business consulting firm involved in market research and analysis.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain meet a large part of their need for drinking water from the strategic Persian Gulf waterway.
