The water stored in Karkheh Dam in Khuzestan Province has had a drastic decline in the past few months, managing director of the dam said.
“Due to the fall in precipitation in the past two years, the dam water level has dropped below 1 billion cubic meters,” Mohammad Reza Yazdanipour was also quoted as saying by ISNA.
“The dam now has about 985 million cubic meters of water, which is less than 20% of the dam’s total capacity, that is 5.3 bcm,” he said.
“Under the current conditions, the priority of water supply is with the household sector in urban and rural regions since drinking water for 52% of Khuzestan population is supplied from Karkheh River.”
Yazdanipour said farmers in the province should observe the prohibition on the cultivation of water-intensive crops such as paddy and corn.
Officials in the southwestern province have encouraged farmers to think about cultivating alternative crops until the water shortage and drought are over.
Agricultural and environmental experts have been urging the government for years to restrict rice farming to the water-rich provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran, home to a majority of Iran’s paddy fields, and ban the activity in the rest of Iran.
Apart from the two northern provinces, rice is currently cultivated in Khuzestan, Isfahan, Fars, Kohgilouyeh-Boyerahmad, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Ilam, Qazvin, Lorestan, Zanjan, Sistan-Baluchestan, Kurdestan, Ardabil, East Azarbaijan and North Khorasan. Most of these provinces are facing an acute water shortage.
According to the latest reports, about 65% of the capacity of dams in Khuzestan are empty.
The reduction in the water level of dams has stopped hydropower generation in the province while the temperature is soaring and people in the province have started using cooling devices over the past few weeks.
Karkheh hydroelectric power plant has gone off the grid as a result of the water shortage. The dam, which overflowed two years ago due to torrential and unprecedented rainfall, has difficulty supplying water for drinking and no water can be allocated to the power station.
Other hydroelectric power plants, including Karoun 1, Karoun 3, Karoun 4 and Masjed Soleyman, have already gone off the grid because of the water deficit.
The decline in precipitation in the last two water years has worsened the drought facing the country for years, which consequently caused water stress.
According to provincial authorities, around 700 small towns and villages in the oil-rich region have difficulty getting water supply.
Iran is located in an arid and semi-arid region. The Energy Ministry’s data show close to 30 million people are struggling with varying degrees of water scarcity and related challenges that have only deteriorated.
