Nearly one kilometer of the central levee on Hamoun-e Puzak Lake tributaries has been brought down to help restore the desiccating wetlands, ILNA reported, quoting the head of the Department of Environment (DoE) office in Sistan and Baluchestan Province as saying.
“Previously, there was only an 80-meter gap in the levee,” Saeed Mahmoudi said, adding that the decision to destroy 1 km of the levee was made after meetings between the DoE chief, Masoumeh Ebtekar, and Sistan and Baluchestan Governor General Ali Owsat Hashemi.
Mahmoudi continued: “The aim is to get as much water into the wetland in as little time as possible.”
Around 700 million cubic meters of water have entered the Hamouns through the Helmand River, Mahmoudi said, and added that 100,000 hectares of Hamoun-e Sabari Lake are filled with water.
The Hamoun wetland is made up of three connected lakes located on the Iran-Afghanistan border: Hamoun-e Helmand, which is entirely in Iran; Hamoun-e Sabari, on the border; and Hamoun-e Puzak, which is almost entirely inside Afghanistan.
Dam constructions and excessive irrigation on both sides of the border have rendered the once thriving wetland dry. During a recent trip to Iran, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan and Masoumeh Ebtekar discussed the abysmal state of the Hamouns and vowed to increase efforts to revive the wetland.
