Drinking water in Tehran could run out in two weeks due to a historic drought, state media warned on Sunday, NOVA reported.
The Amir Kabir Dam, one of five that provide drinking water to the capital, “has only 14 million cubic meters of water, which is eight percent of its capacity“. This was warned by the director of the capital's water supply company, Behzad Parsa, quoted by the IRNA news agency. He added: “At this level, it can continue to supply Tehran with water for only two weeks“.
The megalopolis with More than 10 million people are nestled on the southern slopes of the often snow-capped Alborz Mountains, which rise to heights of up to 5,600 meters and whose rivers feed numerous reservoirs. But the country is in the midst of its worst drought in decades. Rainfall in Tehran province is “almost unprecedentedly low for a century,” a local official said last month.
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A year ago, the Amir Kabir dam held 86 million cubic meters of water, Parsa reported, but the Tehran region has seen “100 percent rainfall.”
"Parsa" did not provide details on the condition of the other reservoirs in the system. According to Iranian media, the population Tehran consumes about three million cubic meters of water every day. As a measure to save water, supplies have been cut off in several neighborhoods in recent days, and outages have been frequent this summer.
Two public holidays were declared in July and August to save water and energy, and power outages were an almost daily occurrence amid the heat wave. “The water crisis is more serious than what is being discussed today,“ warned Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the time.