Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has opened a mega project for transferring desalinated sea water to arid deserts in the Iranian Plateau, the first in the history of a country where water shortage has always been a major impediment to economic development.
Rouhani used a video conference call on Thursday to supervise the start of water transfer from desalination facilities off the Persian Gulf in southern Hormozgan province to water-intensive industries in southeastern province of Kerman.
The transfer line, which includes dozens of tunnels, pumping stations and storage facilities, takes desalinated water some 305 kilometers to one of Iran’s largest mining and metals plants in Sirjan.
The first phase of the project has cost nearly 165 trillion rials (over $600 million). The Iranian Energy Ministry said that around a third of the total water desalinated in the project, some 150 million m3 per year from a total of 450 million m3 of sea water, would be purchased on a guaranteed basis for household consumption in two coastal cities.
The transfer line is planned to continue another 500 kilometers in the next phases of the project to take water to copper smelters in Sarcheshmeh, in north of Kerman, and further into the heart of the Iranian desert in Yazd province where the sprawling Chadormalu mining complex, the largest iron ore producer in the Middle East, is located.
The desalinated water will also be consumed for irrigation, said Rouhani during the inauguration ceremony, as he insisted that the project would relieve a huge burden from underground water resources and would boost environmental conditions in the Iranian Plateau and along the Persian Gulf coast.