The first phase of a plan to transfer reclaimed sewage from Tabriz wastewater treatment plant to Urmia Lake has become operational, the governor general of East Azarbaijan Province said.
“The project, which involves a 10-km pipeline, power utilities and special valves, will help supply 70 million cubic meters of processed wastewater to the troubled lake a year,” Abedin Khorram was also quoted as saying by the Energy Ministry’s news portal.
The completion of the second phase that has already started will raise the current volume to 125 mcm a year, he added.
Khorram said the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran (Abfa) started work on the initiative in 2016 and has spent close to $5 million so far, which was borrowed from the National Development Fund of Iran, the country's sovereign wealth fund.
“The development of wastewater facilities is in line with the guidelines of Urmia Lake Restoration Project that has tasked towns and cities in the vicinity of Urmia Lake’s catchment area to treat their wastewater and direct it toward the lake,” he added.
According to the official, an estimated 60 million cubic meters of reclaimed wastewater flowed into Urmia Lake last year, part of which was from treatment plants in Naqadeh, Urmia, Mahabad, Miandoab, Salmas and Boukan in the northwestern province.
Instead of the conventional activated sludge process, the new facility is equipped with step-feed aeration system in which primary effluent enters the aeration tank at several points along the length of the tank, rather than at the beginning or head of the tank.
Kanisib Dam Plan
Despite efforts to transfer treated sewage from Tabriz to the lake, other plans, including the scheme to supply water from Kanisib Dam in Piranshahr, West Azarbaijan Province, to the lake through a tunnel is still lagging.
According to Karim Sheybani Yekta, the head of Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company, deep cracks have appeared on the walls and ceiling of the 40-km tunnel that has been constructed to transfer water from the dam to the lake.
“Although the project is complete, it cannot become operational unless the widening cracks are fixed and that will obviously take time,” he added.
The tunnel is part of a plan to restore a lake that has been struggling with serious drought for years, but now the whole scheme is lagging behind as the lake’s situation is worsening.
Once the second-largest saltwater lake in the Middle East, the lake attracted birds and bathers to bask in its turquoise waters. Nonetheless, in the early 1970s, nearly three decades of drought have shriveled the basin, shrinking it by a shocking 90%.
“The tunnel, after it is repaired, will allow the transfer of 5 cubic meters of water per second from Kanisib Dam, located near the border with Iraq, to the lake,” he said, adding that with the completion of the project, 600 million cubic meters of water will be transferred to the lake.
Environmental advocates have warned about the deteriorating condition of Urmia Lake, a large salt lake that has shrunk in size because of repeated spells of drought, damming and unrestrained groundwater pumping in surrounding areas.
Local officials in West Azarbaijan said in March that the surface area of Urmia Lake had shrunk by nearly a third over the year to reach 2,324 square kilometers.
The amount of water in the lake has also declined by less than a half to around 3 billion cubic meters, down 40% compared to 2019 when it stored 5 bcm.
The drying up of Urmia Lake has caused major dust storms in Iran in recent years.
Other measures have been taken to help replenish the lake, including the efficient management of surface and underground water in the lake’s vicinity, sealing over 4,000 illegal wells near the region and promoting sustainable farming on 6,000 hectares.
