Iran to open 10 new dams until March: Report
A new report shows that Iran will open 10 new dams with a capacity of nearly quarter a billion cubic meters of water until March amid increased precipitation this year that has prompted plans for more dam projects across the country.
The Monday report by the official IRNA agency said that the planned dams would provide more than 41 million cubic meters of clean water for 1.6 million people in nine Iranian cities.
It said, however, that the dams would mostly cover the irrigation needs in six Iranian provinces through supplying nearly 700 million cubic meters of water to the farms. The report said that around eight million cubic meters of the capacity of the dams will go to the industries.
The projects come amid an increased precipitation in Iran this year. Floods swept through various areas in north, west and southwest of Iran in late March and in April, forcing some unprecedented waves of evacuations.
The floods prompted calls on the government to revive some of its stalled dam construction projects to restrict the flow of water from rivers.
Local news agencies reported on Sunday that water flowing into dams across the country since late September, when the current Iranian water year started, had increased by 87 percent compared to the similar period last year to reach 2 billion cubic meters.
The reports said a surge in precipitation over the past few days had caused the water in dams to increase by nearly 40 percent, adding that 16 out of 172 dams across Iran, which can hold a maximum of 50 billion cubic meters of water, had become nearly full as a result of new wave of rainfall.
