Precipitation in Khorasan Razavi Province has plummeted by a massive 60% over the last two years, which is unprecedented in the past 50 years, managing director of Mashhad Water and Wastewater Company said.
“Since the beginning of the last water year [ended Sept. 22, 2022), rainfall has declined by 25% compared with the long-term average, causing the volume of water in 16 dams of the region to reduce by about 80%,” Hossein Esmaeilian was also quoted as saying by the Energy Ministry’s news portal.
Dams in and around Mashhad are less than 20% full and supplying water to the metropolis will be a major challenge unless available resources are managed with utmost care, he added, noting that ground and surface water resources are in critical conditions and the drought in the region is unparalleled over the last half a century.
“We are in dire need of efficient water management,” he said.
Water is wasted in all areas, including household consumption, drinking, urban and rural sanitary purposes, agriculture, industries and services.
The official called for effective planning and its speedy implementation, “instead of hoping for more rainfall.”
“The current water crisis has been aggravated by the seemingly perennial drought as well as years of bad resource management, especially in the province’s agriculture sector,” he said, asserting that digging unauthorized wells and water pollution also contribute to the problem.
Esmaeilian said extraction from renewable water resources in the parched province has reached alarming levels, stressing that at least 25% of what is being consumed now belong to future generations.
Dangerous Trend
Referring to measures to reverse the dangerous consumption trend, the official said sealing illegal wells is a top priority.
The process of installing smart meters on authorized water wells has been expedited so that water extraction can be monitored accurately and round-the-clock.
Esmaeilian pointed out that the residents of Iran’s most important religious province have not yet realized the extent of the water crisis. “It is the company's responsibility to spread awareness. If not, a bad situation will get worse,” he said.
More than 30 million pilgrims from in and outside Iran visit Mashhad, the provincial capital and major shrine city, every year.
According to the official, Iran and Turkmenistan have agreed on better management of water shared from Friendship Dam (also known as Doosti Dam).
“As per the agreement, the dam water won’t be used in agriculture and will only be used for drinking purposes.”
“At present, about 20% of Mashhad's drinking water resources are supplied from Doosti Dam that is located 170 km from the metropolis,” he added.
Esmaeilian noted that the dam has a storage capacity of over 1.2 billion cubic meters and the two neighboring countries have equal shares of the reservoir.
The Iran–Turkmenistan Friendship Dam is situated on Hariroud River, which forms part of the international boundary between Iran and Turkmenistan.
The dam was completed in 2004, and both countries agreed that each would have an equal right to the waters of the river. It was officially opened in 2005.
Irrigation Purposes
The dam supplies water for irrigation and drinking purposes to surrounding areas.
Hariroud River or Herat River flows across 1,100 kilometers from the mountains of central Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, where it forms the Tejend oasis and disappears in the Karakum Desert. Part of this river also flows into Iran.
Iran and Turkmenistan have built dams and canals on the river since 2004. The construction of Iran–Turkmenistan Friendship Dam provoked Kabul to build another dam, Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam, on the same river as it felt its water resources are being plundered. Consequently, the water behind Doosti Dam declined drastically.
According to Alexander Leicht, former officer-in-charge of the UNESCO Cluster Office in Tehran, water paucity across continents is aggravating so fast that providing essential goods and basic services, namely sanitation for large segments of the world population, has been adversely affected.
Water-associated infectious diseases claim up to 3.2 million lives each year, approximately 6% of all deaths globally.
Repeated droughts are destroying farms that can produce enough crops to feed 81 million people, said the World Bank in a recent report, aptly named Uncharted Waters.
"The 21st century is witnessing the collision of two prevailing trends – rising human populations coupled with a changing climate," the financial institution argues. It is no small matter, as the collision could be fierce.
“It is regrettable that very few practical solutions have been devised to tackle the critical issue so far, except for the areas where famine and water scarcity claim millions of lives,” Leicht said.
