A Third City in Western Iran Reports Water Supply Cut-Offs

The city of Urmia in West Azerbaijan province has become the latest to report chronic water supply problems after recent extreme weather in Iran.

Earlier this week citizens of Shahrekord in Charmahal and Bakhtiari province protested outside the governor’s office after piped water was cut off for nine days straight.

Local officials said a pipeline from the Koohrang spring had been temporarily cut off due to the high turbidity of the water after recent torrential rains, which caused catastrophic flooding in most of Iran’s 31 provinces. But the issue remains unresolved close to two weeks later.

Extreme low pressure and cut-offs have also been reported in the city of Hamedan, about 250 miles northwest. Further northwest in Urmia, as of Thursday, citizens have said they too had faced recurrent, major drops in water pressure and occasional cut-offs for the previous seven days.

The problems in Urmia are reportedly worsening between 4pm and the small hours of the morning. The news website Khabar Online reports that unlike in Shahrekord, Urmia Water and Sewerage Company blamed the cut-offs on “extreme heat” and “repair works”.

On Thursday, a report by Islamic Republic of Iran Radio conceded that water shortages had “intensified” in the past few days. This, it said, was chiefly due to delayed water transfers from the Talwar Dam in Kurdistan province, near the border with Hamedan.

The delays were linked to a depletion of water reserves in underground aquifers. Where the ground is extremely dry, as is the case for many of Iran's former plains, water cannot always be absorbed even after heavy flooding.

In some parts of Iran, the report stated, piped water had been cut off completely from 11am to 5pm, and for more than 12 hours a day in Hamedan.

Alireza Ghasemi Farzad, the governor of Hamedan, told the media that Hamedan’s water supply infrastructure was supposed to have been updated 17 years ago. The project, he said, was still only 40 percent completed. But he then claimed the issue would be resolved once and for all “in the coming months”.