The third phase of the Urmia Wastewater Treatment Plant and the water transmission line to Urmia Lake were launched on Tuesday.
Costing more than $4.4 million, the third phase treats 60,000 cubic meters of sewage per day and the resulting effluent flows toward the lake, IRNA reported.
One of the advantages of the plan is environmental preservation. Another advantage is that it helps restore the Urmia Lake by transferring 51 million cubic meters of reclaimed sewage per year.
The first two phases of the plant had already covered 400,000 people in Urmia City, West Azarbaijan Province. With the launch of the third phase and 11-kilometer-long transmission line, 300,000 more people in Urmia are now covered by the sewerage system. The construction of the fourth phase is in its early stages.
Several wastewater processing units are at varying stages of construction in the East and West Azarbaijan provinces and will significantly raise the effluent processing capacity after completion.
A wastewater development project in Tabriz, East Azarbaijan Province, will also offer a ray of hope to revive the troubled lake.
The second phase of the wastewater treatment plant will help raise the annual inflow of treated wastewater to Urmia Lake by 125%, as it will transfer 75 million cubic meters of reclaimed sewage to the lake per year.
The wastewater transfer project, launched in 2015, was supposed to come on stream in January but financial constraints delayed it.
Estimates had shown that the project would cost less than $10 million, but due to forex market volatility, more than $35 million have been spent but it still needs more funds.
Reclaim Sewage
The project will collect and treat sewage produced by at least 1 million people in Tabriz and the reclaimed water will be directly transferred to the lake.
An estimated 60 mcm of reclaimed wastewater enter Urmia Lake every year, part of which is from treatment plants in Naqadeh, Urmia, Mahabad, Miandoab, Salmas and Boukan in the northwestern province.
Located between the provinces of East and West Azarbaijan, Urmia Lake — a massive salt lake in Iran’s northwest and a sister to Utah’s Great Salt Lake — has lost nearly 95% of its volume over the last two decades.
As water levels drop, salinity spikes and threatens the lake’s brine shrimp population and bird species that depend on the shrimp for food. The lake’s water levels are so low that at some coastal resorts, tourism boats must be pulled a kilometer from shore by tractor before reaching suitable depths.
Iranian researchers and Utah State University have synthesized 40 years of experimental, field, satellite and model data for Urmia Lake to define new restoration objectives not only to lower salinity, sustain artemia and flamingo populations, and reduce lakebed sludge, but also to improve recreational access from resort beaches.
A new study has found that increasing the water level alone cannot help revive the lake unless other important variables, such as lake evaporation, salt dissolution, climate change impacts and socioeconomic factors, are taken into account.
