BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 9
By Elnur Baghishov – Trend:
A mega-project to pump water from the Araz River to the Tabriz city of East Azerbaijan Province (northwestern Iran) has been launched, Executive Director of the Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province Regional Water Company Yousef Ghaffarzadeh told reporters, Trend reports referring to the IRNA.
Ghaffarzadeh stressed that the length of the pipeline to pump water from the river to Tabriz is 145 kilometers.
He said that 5 pumping stations have been installed on the 35-kilometer part of the pipeline. Further, he noted that a tender has already been held for the construction of a 110-kilometer pipeline.
"It is estimated that 680 million euros will be spent on the construction of the entire project," he said.
Ghaffarzadeh said that the pipeline will supply water to 22 cities and 169 villages, including the cities of Tabriz and Jolfa.
The director emphasized that the project envisages the supply of water to industrial and agricultural parks, as well as the pumping of 100 million cubic meters of wastewater to Lake Urmia.
"About 65 percent of the 10 large dams in the East Azerbaijan Province are full. The dams with a capacity of 590 million cubic meters contain 386 million cubic meters of water. The water reserves in the dams decreased by 10 percent compared to last Iranian year (from March 21, 2019 to March 20, 2020)," he said.