President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday promulgated the law to transfer water from the Sea of Oman to Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
The parliament authorized the start of construction work on a major water transfer project to the littoral southeastern province in mid-February and the Guardians Council also gave the go-ahead to the project last week, ILNA reported.
In a letter signed by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf addressed to President Raisi, the parliament announced the ratification of the legislation on transferring water from the Sea of Oman to the province.
The ratification obliges the Energy Ministry and the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade to implement the water transfer project and tasks the vice presidency for scientific affairs to oversee their work.
The project involves desalination of seawater for drinking and other uses in Sistan-Baluchestan, where most areas have a dry hot weather with little annual rain.
The project is aimed at responding to an acute water shortage in Sistan-Baluchestan, Iran’s largest province by area located along the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Two Other Provinces
In addition to Sistan-Baluchestan, water will also reach South Khorasan and Khorasan Razavi provinces. The whole project includes a pipeline stretching over 1,530 km.
The first priority is water supply to Chabahar in Sistan-Baluchestan, which is situated along the coastline of the Sea of Oman. Freshwater will meet the drinking needs of Chabahar and the surrounding regions by summer.
The transmission line in Sistan-Baluchestan Province will be 820 km long and construction is estimated to cost $1.66 billion.
The daily water deficit in Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, is about 100,000 cubic meters.
Water supply to the city, with a population of 900,000 people, is as low as 150,000 cubic meters per day, which is adequate for only 300,000 residents.
At least 250,000 cubic meters of water are needed by Zahedan per day, but underdeveloped infrastructure has resulted in serious water shortage.
Chabahar is a parched region that needs at least 354,000 cubic meters of water every day. Transferring water without harming the environment is an obligation of governments. To find the least costly mode, multifaceted studies on the ecological and environmental conditions of the area as well as the environmental impact of transferring water have been carried out.
When the project becomes fully operational, an estimated 750 million cubic meters of freshwater will be supplied annually to Sistan-Baluchestan, South Khorasan and Khorasan Razavi provinces for drinking and industrial use.
The three provinces have been long suffering from acute water shortages. Environmentalists and experts say water transfer from the Sea of Oman through pipelines to the parched and water-stressed regions is the last option to tackle the water crisis.
Environmental Ramifications
The water transfer project from the Sea of Oman has its own critics inside Iran, as they express concerns about the environmental ramifications of projects as well as its huge financial costs.
It is generally believed that macro projects (water transfer) usually lead to environmental disasters like exacerbating soil erosion and damaging marine ecosystems.
Environmentalists warn that in addition to harming the ecosystem, transferring water via a long pipeline can create false hope among farmers and undermine their obligation to rethink unacceptable and wasteful farming practices that have long reached a crisis point.
Farmers in the three provinces consume 11 billion cubic meters of water a year. Experts have said that if the three regions cut water consumption only by 3% a year, there will be no need for the multibillion-dollar projects to transfer seawater.
Others, however, believe the project will fix economic and social problems in the region while it will allow water transfer pipelines to spread to the economically flourishing region of Khorasan in eastern Iran.
A study conducted by the World Resources Institute has ranked Iran as the world's 24th most water-stressed nation, putting it at extremely high risk of future water scarcity.
In November 2020, Iran started pumping desalinated water from the Persian Gulf to the southern province of Kerman. An extension of the project financed by steel and iron manufacturers in central Iran was launched in March 2021.
