Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 16
By Temkin Jafarov - Trend:
Lake Van is located 350 meters above Lake Urmia. This facilitates the transfer of water into Lake Urmia from Turkey, Isa Kalantari, Iran's Lake Urmia restoration center, told Tasnim News agency Sept. 16.
"Van and Urmia Lakes share 170 kilometers," he said. "The work over a water transfer project is underway."
"The two countries are holding the technical and political negotiations to implement the project," he said.
According to the Iranian media, one of the representatives of the Lake Urmia restoration center, Hadi Bahaduri, said that at the moment, Turkey has frozen funds from the sale of Iranian oil in the amount of $9 billion.
"The water is planned to be transferred from Lake Van to Lake Urmia through these funds," he said.
He said that $1 billion is required for implementing such a project.
Bahaduri also stressed water transferring into the lake from Georgia.
"In political terms, there are no problems with the water transfer from Georgia," he said.
"However, this project is inexpedient in technical and economic terms."
Lake Urmia is in the northwest of Iran. Over 70 percent of its area has dried up. The level has been declining since 1995. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani set up a working group for saving Lake Urmia. Its area is about 6,000 square kilometers. Lake Urmia needs 3.1 billion cubic meters of water per year to survive.
Edited by CN
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