July 22, 2016
An official in West Azerbaijan province says the province has decided to pump treated wastewater into Lake Urumiyeh in an effort to re-stock the lake, which has almost disappeared.
Farhad Sarkhosh, who heads the provincial committee on the lake, told reporters the idea is to fill part of the lake with treated wastewater from nearby cities. He said an estimated 50 million cubic meters of treated wastewater would enter the lake each year. “By 2021, the estimated amount of water should exceed 300 million cubic meters,” he said.
He said the wastewater flow into the lake would begin in October.
Sarkhosh said the plan is part of a master plan to channel treated wastewater from the cities of Tabriz and Urumiyeh to refill the lake. Other efforts already announced to get more water into the lake involve re-routing the Zarrineh River to flow into the Simineh River that flows into Lake Urumiyeh, opening the floodgates of several dams to allow more water flow into the lake, curbing illegal subterranean water usage and dredging rivers leading to Lake Urumiyeh so more water will flow into the lake before evaporating.
But the major effort is to get farmers in the region to use less water for irrigation by adopting the drip irrigation method that requires vastly less water.
Back in December, Parviz Arasteh, the chief environmental officer for West Azerbaijan province, said the most effective of the measures talen so far was the channeling of the Zarrineh River into the Simineh River.
It isn’t clear how this diversion benefitted Lake Urumiyeh since before the diversion the Zarrineh already flowed into the lake.
According to Sarkhosh, as of July 10, Lake Urumiyeh’s elevation had increased 60 centimeters (24 inches) compared to one year earlier. But even with that recent increase, the lake has fallen 3.3 meters (10.5 feet) in recent decades from its normal height.
The lake now covers only 10 percent of the area it once encompassed, he said. –
