WATER CRISIS IN IRAN: CODIFICATION AND STRATEGIES IN URBAN WATER Dr H.Motiee*, GH. Manouchehri**, Dr M.R.M. Tabatabai*** * Assistant Professor, Water and Wastewater Eng. Dept., PWIT, P.O.Box 16765-1719, Tehran, Iran.E- mail: [email protected] ** Director of Water and Wastewater Company, Tehran, Iran *** Assistant Professor, Water Eng. Dept., PWIT, P.O.Box 16765-1719, Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT Human civilization has always been in evolution by having direct access to water resources throughout history. Water, with its qualitative and quantitative effects, plays an important role in economic and social develoments. Contrary to other sources, water is not replaceable. By increasing world population and also growth of communities, water and its consumption has become important. This may even become more significant in those countries where the volume of rainfall is limited. Water consumption per capita depends on the culture, kind of activities and climate conditions, which varies in different areas. These differences are such that the variation in water consumption per capita may range between 3.0 to 700 liters per day. Iran is located in southwest Asia with an average annual rainfall of 250 millimeters. It has an arid and semi-arid climate. Water crisis has appeared in Iran as a serious problem. There are mainly two reasons for that: (1) Lack of proper water management and (2) Occurrence of drought. In fact, water crisis can be defined as an unadjustment between water resources and rate of consumption. In this paper attempts have been made to identify factors influencing water crisis in Iran. Solutions are also put forward to control and reduce this for the future. KEYWORDS: Iran, Urban water, Water crisis, Drought, Water management, Water resources 1. INTRODUCTION Iran with an arid and semi-arid geographic specification is located in Southwest Asia. The normal annual average of precipitation is 250 mm. The geographic and climatic variation of the country is very extensive. For instance, annual average rainfall in the north is more than 1000 mm, while this figure is less than 100 mm for central and southeast of the country. Existing of mountainous areas in the north and west have caused the flows of several main rivers. At the same time vast desert spread in the Central and Southeast. For this reason water resources diversity is quite visible. These conditions lead to uneven distribution of population. More than 50% of population lives in the west and north, while about 70% of water resources is located in these areas (Bitaraf, 2000). The sum of annual water resources is estimated 135x109m3, the consumption rate in the three main sectors are as follows: 1- Domestic urban consume sector : five percent (5%) 2- Industrial sector : twenty percent (20%) 3- Agricultural sector : ninety three percent (93%) Construction and performance of hydraulic structures such as dams, kanats, and conveyance channels for reservoirs, transmission and distribution systems have been experience by Iranian people since 3000 years ago. Three decades ago, before 1970, because of low population, agricultural nature and low rate of urban population, water supply was not considered as a critical problem of the country. During the last three decades, large dams have been built around the big cities such as Tehran, Isfahan, Ahvaz, etc, in order to supply water for urban, industrial and agricultural consumption. Where surface water has not been available, ground water has also been used as water resources for supply. Since 1980, a rapid population growth as well as rapid economic change has lead to significant agricultural and industrial development and consequently increasing urban population (Manouchehri 2000). Consequently, dramatic changes have been encountered in water demand. Until 1990, water supply was not a critical problem and there was a reasonable ratio between available demand and supply. In recent decade, water supply has appeared as a critical national problem, which is explained in the followings: 2. CAUSES OF WATER CRISIS OCCURRENCE There are mainly four reasons for which water crisis occurs (Manouchhri, 2000): 1- Rapid population growth which is improprotional to the environmental capacity, 2- Development of different parts of agriculture, industry and urbanization, 3- A decrease in the number of appropriate structures to store, distribute and convey water. This is due to the lack of financial sources, which has led to the less investments, 4- Worldwide occurrence of drought (i.e. Iran) since 1995. 2.1. A Progressional Increase in Population Since 1979, due to the cultural, social and economic change in Iran, there has been a progressional increase in population in such a way that during the last 20 years the population has increased from 30 to 60 million people. This has caused an increase in urban population by 3.5 percent. Migration of people from rural areas to big cities and the suburbs has also caused an increase in urbanization from one year to the next. This has culminated on a water demands increase. The urban population of Iran was estimated 17 million in 1980, and the number of people who used urban water services were estimated 13 million. This statistics has now risen to 40 million urban population of which 38 million people take benefit of water services. On the basis of available reports, city migrants have been divided into two classes: economic and environmental migrants. Environmental migrants are those who had to leave their lands due to the droughts (i.e. central and southwest of Iran) while economic migrants are those who have moved to big cities (i.e.Tehran) for better conditions and facilities of life. Recently, regional water management of Tehran have announced that they might not be able to provide water for Tehran in the near future. In this context, there are migrants who used to consume water 10 Liters/day, but now, they tend to consume more of that in big cities rather than using other urban services. Most of these migrants reside in suburbs where urban services are much cheaper than central and inner zones. In order to reduce population growth rate and migrations, the followings have been designed and applied: · Cutting down the rate of birth from 3% to 1% by applying the adequate population control policy, · Controling migration from rural areas to big cities by constructing urban infrastructural and facilities. For instance, lots of attempts have been made, in addition to other services, in order to convey water to the rural areas by canals and pipelines through dam construction. In big cities of Iran, the rate of capacity of population is challenging which is neither compatible to environmental potentials nor to the rate of economic growth. It is anticipated that the Iranian population will reach about 100 million by year 2020 and the number of urban areas vary from 600 to 1000. 2.2. Development of Different Sectors: Agriculture, Industry and Urbanization In present decade (1990-2000) water demand has been increased very rapidly in different sectors in agriculture, industry and urban services. This demand is not only due to the population increase but also due to an increase in the three so-called sectors. In the agriculture, with the most water consumption, there is the highest loss, which has been noticed by the people in charge in irrigation and drainage Department. Though urban water demand consumes only 5% to 6% percent of the country water resources, however, due to the high rate of consumption in those catchments, water supply has become serious problems. Industrial growth can be a serious threat to Iranian water resources for two reasons: On one hand, as the industrial rate of growth increases, the demand for water is also growing in parallel. On the other hand the wastewater resulted from industrial activities may cause surface and groundwater pollution, which makes Iranian water resources problems two folds. Finding rational solutions for industrial effluent treatment is another environmental issues, which have been on the Water and Wastewater Department Agenda. 2.3. Lack of Financial Sources for New Investments Iran is classified as those countries which have been dependent on the financial sources resulted from sales of oil. The revenue from the sales of oil on the National economy has appeared by an increase in oil prices in international markets, which has caused government to run a lot of projects in reservoir dams as well as water distribution and conveyance systems. On the contrary, as a reduction in oil prices comes to effect in the international markets, a lot of projects are implemented slowly or even stopped. Presently, Reservoir Dam Karkheh with a storage capacity of 7×10 9 cubic meters and Karoun 2 with a storage capacity of 3×10 9 cubic meters are the biggest reservoir dam construction projects. The vitality of water and its storage for Iran, with an estimation of population to be 100 million people by 2020, is so important that several dam construction projects are in progress in most of the rivers. Currently there are 84 dams in operation, 68 dam projects are in progress and 120 are being studied in their early phases. However, the lack of financial sources may cause a long delay in the operation of these projects. This is clearly noticed in Karkheh Dam construction project whish is supposed to be ready for operation in two to three years time but may take a long time for that. This can partly be overcome by selling the shares of these projects in stock market. Therefore, people are encouraged to investe in these kinds of projects to company the government in such national projects. Bearing in mind, that foreign funds have also played very important roles in some projects like the World Bank credit for 145 million Dollars for Tehran sewage Network.