From the article: ... ... ... More coverage: Iranians fear taps running dry as country faces worst drought in 60 years ... ... ...
From the article:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has suggested his country's capital will need to be moved from Tehran due to ecological unsustainability in the city.
Speaking at a meeting in Qazvin, the president warned that relocating the capital would become unavoidable given the overcrowding and water shortages in the city of 9.7 million.
His government has proposed the underdeveloped Makran region in southeastern Iran as a possible new location.
"When we proposed relocating the capital, we lacked the budget - otherwise it might have happened," Pezeshkian told officials.
"People said it was impossible, but now it’s no longer optional."
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Concerns over water shortages have been mounting in Tehran, which has been struck by a crippling drought with Iranian media even speculating about the possibility of evacuating the capital.
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Tehran’s dams normally supply 70 percent of the city's water, with the rest provided by underground resources. Low rainfall and increased evaporation have, however, reduced the dams’ water share and put pressure on groundwater.
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The city is renowned for its congestion and pollution, made only worse by aged vehicles which take to the roads every day, and only partly relieved by subway system, which has been running since 1999 and now carries more than three million people daily.
Taps are already running dry across Iran as the government enforces strict rationing to try to conserve what limited supplies it still has.
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Rainfall across much of the country is about 85 per cent below average, with the worst drought conditions in about 60 years taking hold.
Decades of mismanagement of natural resources, including the construction of too many dams and a lack of enforcement when it came to drilling illegal wells, have combined with inefficient agriculture and adverse weather conditions to lead to the crisis.
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Another Iranian, Nasim, said the quality of the drinking water they did get was "very poor".
She argued that cutting off water supplies, or "reducing pressure" as it was described by authorities, was not "a real solution".
"I see that people are buying all kinds of water storage containers, from small 4-litre buckets to large tanks," she said.
"Even if we don't use water during those cut-off hours, we still have to store it."
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Satellite imagery has shown the scale of the depleted water reserves in dams across Iran.
Nineteen major dams, accounting for about 10 per cent of the country's supplies, are reportedly dry.
Many that still hold water are at single-digit percentage capacity.
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Iranians fear taps running dry as country faces worst drought in 60 years
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