Vast Amount of Rainfall Wasted in Fars Province

Watershed management plans over 1.7 million hectares of Fars natural sites have enabled the province to store 808 million cubic meters of water from the recent precipitation, but a vast amount of the rainfall has been wasted due to the lack of infrastructure across the province.

“If the infrastructure was available in other areas, more rainwater could have been stored,” said Mehrzad Boustani, director of the provincial office of Forests, Range and Watershed Management Organization, ILNA reported.

Boustani said that watershed management structures placed along the path of dried rivers have filled up.

However, the official noted that watershed schemes covering 3.8 million hectares have not been implemented due to lack of funds, which is why most of the rainwater was wasted.

“Approximately 7 trillion rials ($184 million) are needed for implementing the plans,” he said.

The official noted that it would be naive to expect the entire budget to be made available at once, but hoped that funds would be supplied in installments from provincial and/or government entities.

“We rely more on the public, philanthropists and other organizations for providing the money,” he said.

Boustani stressed that under the present drought conditions, the smallest amount of precipitation must be used in the most efficient way possible, especially to help replenish groundwater resources that are fast depleting.

“We must be able to direct water toward aquifers using watershed management structures so as to fill them up and prevent land subsidence,” he said.

Watershed schemes, if managed strategically, can help reduce the sources of dust storms such as dried wetlands and abandoned farms.