Water levels at the dam reservoirs supplying Iran’s north-eastern city of Mashhad have plunged below 3%, according to reports, as the country suffers from severe water shortages.
“The water storage in Mashhad’s dams has now fallen to less than 3%,” Hossein Esmaeilian, the chief executive of the water company in Iran’s second largest city by population, told the ISNA news agency.
He added: “The current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Mashhad, home to around 4 million people and Iran’s holiest city, relies on four dams for its water supply. Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached about “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams”.
Authorities in Tehran warned over the weekend of possible rolling cuts to water supplies in the capital amid what officials call the worst drought in decades. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has cautioned that without rainfall before winter, even Tehran could face evacuation.
In the capital, five major dams supplying drinking water are at “critical” levels, with one empty and another at less than 8% of capacity, officials say.
“If people can reduce consumption by 20%, it seems possible to manage the situation without rationing or cutting off water,” Esmaeilian said, warning that those with the highest consumption could face supply cuts first.
Nationwide, 19 major dams – about 10% of the country’s reservoirs – have in effect run dry, Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company said in late October, according to Mehr news agency.
The water crisis in Iran follows months of drought across the country. Over the summer, authorities announced public holidays in Tehran to cut back on water and energy consumption as the capital faced almost daily power outages during a heatwave.
On Sunday local newspapers attacked what they described as the politicisation of environmental decision-making for the water crisis. The reformist Etemad newspaper cited the appointment of “unqualified managers … in key institutions” as being the main cause of the crisis.
Shargh, another reformist daily, said: “Climate is sacrificed for the sake of politics.”
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