For those who worry about Iranian nuclear issues, they might want to look at the water situation, which appears to be dreadful. Alireza Ramezani in AL Monitor digs in on the capital city of Tehran.
Tehran’s population has ballooned so immensely in the past decade that Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian has warned of an impending failure to supply clean and safe drinking water to residents should the capital’s population — currently hovering at 12 million — continue to rise, Hamshahri newspaper reported on Aug. 22. “The water-security problem is very serious in Tehran and needs to be addressed immediately,” Chitchian said.
Some signs are emerging. A rising number of Tehran residents have been experiencing a drop in water pressure, according to leading economic newspaper Donya-e Eqtesad. People living on the third floor or higher have had to installpowerful water pumps to suck up more water from the urban pipelines, the paper noted. The wave of pump installations has further lowered water pressure, worsening the situation for citizens without pumps.
The use of pumps is now so widespread that water experts advise residents to also set up small water tanks on their roofs to draw from, to help minimize the pumps’ impact on water pressure. Water pressure has dropped in recent weeks by 30% in some districts, Donya-e Eqtesad reported.
Alireza references this article by Andrew Follett on The Daily Caller News Foundation, which reports:
Iran’s vice minister of energy for water announced Wendesday that several of the country’s major cities will have a water crisis this summer and that little could be done to prevent it. The minister pointed out that Iran’s per-capita water consumption is nearly twice the global average. The crisis has been largely caused by improper use of groundwater resources, a rapidly growing population, and decades of mismanagement by the government.
I’m somewhat non-plussed by the use of a comparison to a world average, and would be much happier if they had reported average Tehran water usage in terms of percentage of recommended consumption of water for good health for all purposes. If the consumption is substantially above the recommendation then consumption can be reduced without imperiling the health and welfare of the people involved – assuming consumption reduction is spread equally across all inhabitants.
Alireza reports on sources of water:
Tehran’s water is mainly supplied by five dams — Taleghan, Karaj, Mamlo, Latian and Lar — and 480 deep wells located across the city. As no further dams can be built around Tehran, the energy minister has warned that more water will have to be extracted from the wells if the situation gets worse — a move that could cause health problems for Tehran residents, as more intense extraction activities increase exposure to pollutants.
I wonder how climate change will affect water production in that area of the world. Just for fun, here’s a population graph of Iran:
