Water levels at the dam reservoirs supplying Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad plunged below three per cent, media reported on Sunday, as the country suffers from severe water shortages.
Advertisement
“The water storage in Mashhad’s dams has now fallen to less than three per cent,” Hossein Esmaeilian, the chief executive of the water company in Iran’s second largest city by population, told ISNA news agency.
He added that “the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity”.
Mashhad, home to around four million people and Iran’s holiest city, relies on four dams for its water supply.
Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached around “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams”.
Advertisement
It comes as authorities in Tehran warned over the weekend of possible rolling cuts to water supplies in the capital amid what officials call the worst drought in decades.
In the capital, five major dams supplying drinking water are at “critical” levels, with one empty and another at less than eight per cent of capacity, officials say.