The death of qanats (aqueducts) in Khorasan Razavi Province’s counties has accelerated due to the drilling of deep wells, both legal and illegal, the head of Gonabad Qasabeh Qanat World Heritage Center said.
“There are 7,000 qanats in the province, of which 40% or 2,800 are dry and the number of unusable qanats is on the rise as there in no funding for restoration projects,” Rasoul Senobari was also quoted as saying by ISNA.
The length of subterranean infrastructure in the area extends over 13,000 kilometers, of which 7,000 km have been rehabilitated over the last four decades with the help of the local people and not the government, he added.
The official noted that the region accounts for 18% of all qanats in Iran (35,000), through which 500 million cubic meters of water are extracted annually for farming and industrial purposes.
“Despite efforts to revive qanats, many of them have dried up due to the limited budget allocated for rehabilitating the subterranean infrastructure in the province,” he rued.
The rehabilitation of each qanat requires $250,000 and the government is reluctant to allocate the budget.
While qanats cannot replace advanced technology in water resource management, they still have a role to play as a sustainable groundwater source since time immemorial.
As a traditional technique for accessing and managing underground water, qanats have been used throughout history in different parts of the world, including the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Americas and west China.
Although its exact history and origin are disputable, it is believed to be an Iranian invention that has been in use forever in Iran.
Among the estimated 35,000 qanats in the country, 11 have received UNESCO’s recognition.
South Khorasan, Yazd, Kerman, Isfahan and Markazi provinces are home to 11 qanats on UNESCO's World Heritage List.
Close to 14% of Iran’s water for farming come from qanats that irrigate 800,000 hectares of farmlands and orchards.
Policy- and decision-makers are gradually realizing that sustainable water supply, environmental protection and agro sector development, among other things, require the revival of qanats.
For centuries, human societies in dry lands have overcome the challenges of water scarcity through traditional methods of water harvesting, one of which is qanat technology.
It is the generic term for an ancient environmentally sustainable water harvesting and conveyance technique believed to have originated in Persia in the early first millennium B.C.
The Gonabad Qasabeh Qanat, also called Kariz eKay Khosrow, is one of the world's oldest and largest networks of qanats built between 700 and 500 BC by the Achaemenid Empire in what is now Gonabad County in Khorasan Razavi Province.
