Water, Power Projects Expand in West Azarbaijan

EghtesadOnline: Sardasht Hydroelectric Power Plant in Sardasht County, West Azarbaijan Province, was connected to the national grid on Tuesday.

News ID: ۷۴۸۸۸۱

09 November 2019

Adjacent to Sardasht Dam near the Iraqi border in the northwest, the power plant has installed capacity of 150 megawatts, and can generate 421 gigawatt-hours of electricity per annum, the Energy Ministry news portal Paven reported.

The new station is in line with efforts to help protect the environment and generate more electricity from non-fossil fuels, such as hydropower and reduce harmful CO2 emissions.

Domestic firms have supplied about 60% of the plant’s equipment and the rest is Chinese, Financial Tribune reported.

Sardasht Dam has a capacity to hold 380 million cubic meters of water. Constructed on Little Zab River, the dam began taking water in June 2017 and helps supply agricultural and drinking water to cities of Sardasht and Rabat.

Hydropower constitutes almost 15%, or 12,000 MW of Iran’s total installed power capacity of 81,000 MW.

Oil- and gas-rich Iran relies on fossil fuels to meet almost  80% of its electricity demand.

Water and Wastewater Treatment

Two water treatment plants and a wastewater treatment plant in the West Azarbaijan Province came online on Wednesday.

The water treatment plants are in Mahabad and Poldasht cities and the wastewater treatment unit is in Golman Town. The projects cost $10 million.

The plant in Mahabad covers 246,000 people and the unit in Poldasht will provide potable water for 12,000 people.

Wastewater treatment plant in Golman is the 229th unit in the country and has a capacity to process 7,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day.

The effluent from Golman plant will be transferred to Lake Urmia via a 1.4-kilometer pipeline.

Transferring treated wastewater to the lake as a practical solution without harming the environmental is underway to increase the water level in the world famous lake that has been struggling with a huge water deficit for years and until recently was on the verge of drying up.

Part of the water from treatment plants in Naqadeh, Urmia, Mahabad, Miandoab, Salmas and Bukan cities in the northwestern province is transferred to the lake. Close to 60 million cubic meters of treated wastewater enters the lake every year.

Guidelines for the Urmia Lake Restoration Project have tasked towns and cities in the vicinity of the lake’s basin to treat wastewater and supply it to the lake.

Located between the provinces of East and West Azarbaijan, Urmia Lake is a closed water body fed through 21 permanent and 39 seasonal rivers. Less than 20 years ago, the lake was Iran’s largest inland body of water.

However, it dried up due to a variety of factors, including the construction of a 15-km causeway to shorten travel time between Urmia and Tabriz cities and the construction of several dams that have choked off water supply from the mountains on either side of the lake.

Many restorative measures have been taken so far to revive the lake namely reducing the high water use by farmers  and diverting water from rivers.