Iran may have to evacuate due to water shortages if it doesn’t rain by the end of the year, Iran’s President Massoud Pezheskian warned in a televised address today.
Iran is facing its worst drought in decades this year. In Tehran, the phenomenon is “unprecedented in a century,” a local official said in October.
“If it doesn’t rain, we should start rationing water to Tehran around the end of November to the beginning of December,” the president said in his speech, broadcast on state television. And “even if we ration it, if it doesn’t rain by then, we’ll have a water shortage and we’ll have to evacuate Tehran,” he continued, without elaborating on how that could be done in a metropolis of 10 million.
The director of the capital’s water company, Behzad Parsa, said last Sunday that the city could run out of drinking water within two weeks. The Amir Kabir Dam, one of five that supply Tehran with drinking water, contains “only 14 million cubic meters of water, which is 8% of its capacity,” he said, according to the official Irna news agency.
On Wednesday, the regional director of the water company, Mohsen Ardakhani, underlined speaking on state television that the residents of Tehran have reduced their water consumption by 10% in the last six months. “If we reach 20%, we will be able to keep the situation stable for a month or two, until it rains,” he said.
40% drop in rainfall
The climate in Tehran is dry and hot in summer. Autumn sometimes rains while winters can be severe, with lots of snow. For economic reasons, the water supply has recently been interrupted in many districts of the city, as was often the case in the summer, the local media reported. In July and August, in the middle of the heat, two days were declared holidays, so as to save water and energy.
According to the Tasnim news agency, the amount of rainfall in Iran fell to 152 mm this year, which is 40% of the average of the last 57 years. In some provinces, the amount of rain fell by 50-80 percent, noted Mohammad Reza Kavianpour, the head of the Water Research Institute, warning that the country “will have to prepare for a critical situation.”
