Reduction of snowfall in Iran has exacerbated the critical condition of dwindling groundwater resources, said the head of the Water Affairs Faculty at Shahid Chamran University in Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province.
“Even if rainfall doubles in the country, the appalling situation of groundwater tables will not improve, which means provinces like Hamedan and West Azarbaijan will face serious water shortage sooner rather than later,” Mehdi Qomshi was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Western provinces received heavy snowfall between January and March, but are experiencing a change in their climate, he added, noting that because they have not adapted themselves to the new pattern yet, the new situation is very likely to put them into trouble.
“Western areas like West Azarbaijan, Hamedan, Urmia and Kurdestan are heavily dependent on groundwater resources for farming activities and now that most aquifers are diminishing, the key agro sector has encountered a serious challenge.”
According to Qomshi, due to over-extraction from groundwater resources over the last four decades, there will be no respite even if precipitation doubles in Iran.
“Drought is here to stay and we, like our ancestors, have no choice but to adjust ourselves to the situation. Agricultural patterns must change and cultivation of water-intensive products should be banned,” he said.
Of the total 18 million hectares of cultivable land, over 10 million hectares are used for farming products like wheat, rice, watermelon and pistachio that require massive amounts of water.
“Given the intense water shortage in Iran, the current figure (10 million hectares) should at least halve in the best-case scenario,” he added.
Dam Building Projects
Criticizing massive dam building projects, the faculty member noted that some dams in Iran have not been constructed in the right place.
“Although dams like Karkheh on the Karkheh River in northwest Khuzestan have massive reservoirs, they are mostly empty and this shows that building such a huge structure on the strategic waterway was a wrong decision,” he added.
Elaborating on Karkheh Dam, Qomshi said despite the enormous reservoir with a storage capacity of 7 billion cubic meters, water stored in it in the past 15 years never surpassed 2.5 bcm.
The dam’s location was not decided as per precise technical regulations and accurate planning. The outcome is that most of the time it is empty.
Referring to other problems with dam building, he said unlike other countries where dams are not necessarily constructed for farming (some are built to only generate power), in Iran all mega structures are used either by the agro or industrial sectors.
One major problem is that such dams tend to create a false sense of water abundance with disastrous consequences.
Building dams on rivers with low water flow (especially in the central plateau) has worsened water scarcity in dry provinces, as water-intensive industries and power plants expand in such regions under the false presumption that dams would be full all the time.
Now that dams are gradually drying up, industries heavily dependent on water are facing acute problems.
The university lecturer said reservoirs can create a false sense of abundance especially in places where water availability and populations don’t match.
Dams and other water infrastructure (like desalination plants) can make communities less resilient because they mask water paucity. This is what has happened in the dry provinces of Iran, such as Isfahan, where huge steel plants were constructed and are being expanded.
Referring to dams in West Azarbaijan Province, Qomshi concurred that when more water storage structures were built, farming boomed.
Growing Needs
So far so good! But now dams in the region are half empty and cannot meet farmers’ growing needs, so they resort to drilling wells and use underground resources that are fast depleting. Moreover, the world-famous Lake Urmia, which was fed with underground resources, is in danger of desiccation.
“Large-scale operations carried out by eastern and western neighboring states to control cross-border rivers have compounded Iran’s mounting water crisis,” he said.
“Controversial policies pursued by Turkey and Afghanistan, which deplete water supplies in transboundary waters, such as shared aquifers, lakes and river basins, have deteriorated water paucity in Iran.”
According to the official, since a long time, without reaching an understanding with Iran, Turkey has launched dam construction initiatives on transboundary rivers, resulting in a substantial reduction of water level not only in Hour Al-Azim wetlands but also in Arvandroud river, both located in the southwestern Khuzestan Province.
Qomshi said frequent dust storms in recent years in southern areas can be directly ascribed to the unilateral action of Turkey in its excessive use of water resources.
“Experts had warned Iranian officials about the ongoing crisis in the 1990s, yet they turned a deaf ear to the warnings and made no efforts for finding novel solutions via water diplomacy,” he said.
