Close to 13,000 small towns and rural districts across the country are deprived of potable water, wastewater networks and sewage collection facilities, director of the state-owned National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran (Abfa) said.
“The massive figure accounts for 40% of the total villages located in remote regions, in which around 1.6 million people are living,” Majid Aqazadeh was also quoted as saying by ISNA.
There are 33,000 rural areas in the country, of which 20,000 are not covered by Abfa’s regular services and a part of them are supplied with safe water via portable tankers, he added.
The official said about 18,000 small towns and villages with a total population of 10 million are living in water-stressed regions.
Residents of Isfahan, Bushehr, Khorasan Razavi, Sistan-Baluchestan, Fars, Kerman and Hormozgan provinces are facing difficulties accessing potable water because these provinces received less rainfall compared to other parts of the country. The provinces also lack adequate water reservoirs.
Water stress occurs when demand for water exceeds the amount available during a certain period, or when poor quality restricts its use. Water stress causes deterioration of freshwater resources in terms of quantity and quality.
Some experts and environmentalists reject the widely-held notion that chronic water shortages can be addressed only through higher precipitation, especially in countries that depend largely on rain-fed agriculture.
According to the official, close to 3,000 small towns have been connected to the national water grid over the last two years and operations are underway to provide 10,000 villages on the outskirts of urban and rural areas with piped water over the next three years at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
Iran’s total urban population has access to piped water as do 75% of rural residents, with the latter figure estimated to reach 90% by 2024.
Referring to the expansion of wastewater collection networks in recent years, Aqazadeh said almost half the 80 million populations is connected to the sewerage system.
Water Use Efficiency
Official data show average global water use efficiency in the sector is about 75%, but the figure is a low as 35% due to unsustainable farming methods used in Iran.
Close to 90,000 kilometers of pipelines in the national water grid are old and dilapidated, and must be replaced, he added.
The national water network in cities stretches over 155,000 kilometers, of which around 25% (or 50,000 km) are decrepit.
Repairing one kilometer of the grid requires $90,000 and renovating old and seeping pipelines will cost $3.1 billion.
Due to financial constraints, Abfa is capable of fixing only 3,000 kilometers of the grid a year. Small wonder the speed of pipeline corrosions has long outpaced renovation and repairs.
It is estimated that 6 billion cubic meters of clean water enter the urban water networks every year.
Putting the length of the network in small towns at around 140,000 km, the state news agency said about 40% (or 50,000 km) of the pipelines need to be fixed. Close to $1.4 billion are needed to rehabilitate the rural grids where non-revenue water is 30%.
Iran has long been fighting drought and deep water deficits, and it is apparent that cutting non-revenue water will be effective in addressing the worsening crisis that has caused serious concern among academicians, conservationists and economic experts, namely experts involved in and dealing with the farming sector.
Non-revenue water refers to water that has been produced and lost in different ways before it reaches the customer.
Abfa has said it fixed 1.2 million kilometers of faulty plus 15,000 km of leaky pipelines between 2009 and 2018.
The utility also checked and repaired 221 kilometers of pipelines in addition to 126,000 water meters nationwide since 2019.
It is estimated that 153 million cubic meters of water are wasted in the country every year in the form of non-revenue water.
Abfa's non-revenue water (in urban areas) is 25.5%, of which 11.8% are real losses [through leaks] and 13.7% are apparent losses [metering errors].
A World Bank study puts the global estimate of physical water loss at 32 billion cubic meters a year, half of it in the developing countries.
