The drilling 10 deep-water wells is one of the programs for supplying drinking water to cities and villages in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, the deputy governor of the province said on Saturday.
“So far, two wells have been drilled and are operational now, one in Ramshar region and one in Nimruz County,” Abbasali Arjomandi was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
Other than digging deep wells, “water supply to several cities of the southeastern province will be made possible through other initiatives, including collecting water from Chah-Nimeh water reservoirs and desalination, and transfer of water from the Oman Sea”, he added.
Chah-Nimeh reservoirs are three natural and big cavities in the south of Sistan Plain, 50 kilometers from Zabol. Surplus water from Hirmand River flows into it via a canal. The reservoirs, with a capacity of 700 million cubic meters, constitute one-seventh of Hamoun Wetland.
Extracting water from deep wells will augment sustainable supplies to the water-stressed province. Lab tests in and outside Iran show the water extracted from the deep well is safe and can be used for drinking.
Perpetual drought has been accompanied by a dangerous decline in rainfall, worsening the water crisis in Sistan-Baluchestan.
On average, the southeast region gets about 60 mm of annual rainfall in autumn and winter, while winter is the rainiest season with more than 50% of annual rainfall. However, last winter, precipitation reached 0.4 mm, the lowest in 50 years.
Although experts strongly oppose inter-basin water transfers as environmentally hazardous and destructive, the government has said the costly water transfer from the Oman Sea is the last resort. Such initiatives, however, are highly costly and take years while drilling deep wells are less expensive and take much less time.
The first two wells drilled at 3,000 meters in the region are an artesian well and water from such wells flow without pumping. Moving water from the Oman Sea needs desalination units costing $1.6 billion and at least three years for completion.
In the past, Hirmand (also known as Helmand) River in Afghanistan, supplied water to the eastern regions. But after building dams over the river, the Kabul government stopped the water flow to Iran.
The outcome is that people in the southeastern regions have been grappling with water and food problems, as their livelihood depended largely on farming and animal husbandry for centuries. With long and severe water shortages, unusually large numbers lost their jobs and started migrating to bigger cities.
Iran and Afghanistan signed a treaty in 1973, which says Iran's share from Helmand is 22 cubic meters per second.
Reportedly, the treaty was to the detriment of Iran because not only did it recognize all dams and canals that the Afghans built on the shared basin, it also reduced Iran’s annual water right to as low as 800 million cubic meters (less than 10% of the river’s annual water flow). The result has been that in the past two decades, the part of Helmand River inside Iran is dry for almost 10 months a year.
