Storage dwindles in Mashhad, home to 4 million people, as country struggles with drought

Mashhad, home to around 4 million people and Iran’s holiest city, relies on four dams for its water supply. Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached about “8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams”.

Authorities in Tehran warned over the weekend of possible rolling cuts to water supplies in the capital amid what officials call the worst drought in decades. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has cautioned that without rainfall before winter, even Tehran could face evacuation.

In the capital, five major dams supplying drinking water are at “critical” levels, with one empty and another at less than 8% of capacity, officials say.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    15 hours ago

    Too late. We have a major emergency in the American West that almost all of us are blithely unaware of. Mexico City may be the first major city to straight up run out of water. Kabul looks to be next.

    And this isn’t all down to global warming. We’re draining monstrous aquifers that took thousands of years to fill.

    Here in NW Florida people were commenting on how unusually rainy it was last spring. Yeah, that was normal 10-20 years ago, rain nearly every afternoon. Had a solid rain last week. Before that? Over a month dry.