Decrease in water levels in some dams in the country compared to last year

According to Energy Press, in a press conference, Issa Bozorgzadeh, spokesman for the water industry, presented a report on the latest rainfall status and the volume of the country’s dam reservoirs, calling the total rainfall in the country from the beginning of the water year to January 1st about 41.4 millimeters and stated: This amount shows a 33 percent decrease compared to the long-term average, and except for the three provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Khorasan Razavi, other provinces are facing a rainfall deficit of 1 to 88 percent.
According to Bozorgzadeh, the percentage of filling in some dams has decreased sharply compared to last year; he explained in this regard: Zayandeh-e Rood Dam in Isfahan, 15 Khordad Dam in Qom Province, Esteghlal, Shamil, Nian and Sarni Dams in Hormozgan Province, Nisa Dam in Kerman and Kamal-Saleh Dam in Markazi Province, which are less than 16 percent full, and the Raees-Ali Delvari Dam in Bushehr, which is 41 percent full, are among them.
The spokesperson for the country’s water industry also stated that the percentage of filling of the five dams supplying drinking water to Tehran is: From the beginning of the water year to the first of January of this year, the volume of reservoirs in Tehran province’s dams has been between two percent (Lar Dam) and 54 percent (Taleqan Dam), and the average filling rate in total is about 19 percent. The average storage volume of these dams until the end of December was about 573 million cubic meters. This means that Tehran residents are still in a state of water stress, and consumption management is very important at this time.
Bozorgzadeh warned about water stress in the country and said: Given the rainfall situation in autumn and forecasts for winter, concerns about the occurrence of water stress in various sectors of consumption are serious, and for this reason, saving water consumption is essential.
Emphasizing the need for special attention to the water sector in next year’s budget, he stated: In recent speeches by the highest officials of the legislative and executive branches, the most important current problem of the country has been the water crisis and water tension, which has become even more difficult to solve than the electricity problem, and the honorable president has also referred to the water consumption situation as a “disaster.” He added: Despite these expressions and feelings of danger, we see that the country’s current credits and budgets do not reflect a figure commensurate with solving this water sector crisis. Stating that one of the problems of the country’s water sector over the past few decades has been that the price of water is not realistic, Bozorgzadeh noted: This is while the fixed water prices and their significant gap with the cost price have become a fundamental problem and imbalance in the water economy, and public credits and annual budgets are also severely limited. The spokesperson for the water industry reminded: This issue has led to the payment of 217 trillion tomans in hidden subsidies in the water sector annually. This is while the debt of the water and sanitation sector to contractors, consultants and suppliers is 47 trillion tomans.
Stating that the water and sanitation sector needs to provide at least 17 hemats per month to implement its projects, he said: The reduction in the autonomy of the water sector due to its low tariff has caused the implementation of projects to depend on public government resources, and the limitation of public resources has also caused the implementation of projects in the water and sanitation sector to slow down. However, if a part of this 217 trillion tomans of hidden subsidies enters the water industry, it can have relative autonomy.
He said: At the beginning of the government, considering the existence of water imbalance and its elimination is among the planned goals and stated in the Seventh Plan, we must reduce water imbalance by 15 billion cubic meters over 5 years, and to achieve this, we must have a plan for it.
Referring to the plans developed by the Ministry of Energy to provide the country with the water it needs, Bozorgzadeh stated: “With the goals set, in the first priority, 711 efforts are needed to meet the needs, and in the second priority, about 250 efforts, and in total, about 960 efforts are needed to provide financing.” He emphasized: “The Ministry of Energy’s opinion is to implement structural and non-structural projects simultaneously, and we consider the implementation of non-structural projects such as demand and consumption management and groundwater management to be prior to structural measures, and all of these require financial resources to their extent, but unfortunately, the water sector has not been seen as it should be in the 1404 budget.”