Water degrees at Iraq’s full-size Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting hundreds of thousands of inhabitants already impacted by using drought with stricter water rationing.
Amid those conditions, seen cracks have emerged within the chickening out shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s self sustaining Kurdistan area and become created in the Nineteen Fifties.
Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves presently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic metres of water out of a probable seven billion.
this is “about 24 percent” of its capacity, the official said, including that the extent of water within the lake had no longer been so low in kind of two decades.
satellite imagery analysed with the aid of AFP suggests the lake’s floor location shrank with the aid of 56 percent among the give up of may additionally 2019, the ultimate yr it become absolutely full, and the start of June 2025.
Tawfeeq blamed climate trade and a “shortage of rainfall” explaining that the timing of the rains had additionally become abnormal.
Over the wintry weather season, Tawfeeq stated the Dukan place received 220 millimetres (eight.7 inches) of rain, compared to a regular 600 millimetres.
– ‘Harvest failed’ –
Upstream damming of the Little Zab River, which flows through Iran and feeds Dukan, was a secondary reason of the falling water tiers, Tawfeeq defined.
additionally buffeted via drought, Iran has built dozens of systems at the river to boom its very own water reserves.
Baghdad has criticised these types of dams, built each by using Iran and neighbouring Turkey, accusing them of substantially proscribing water circulate Iraq through the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Iraq, and its forty six million inhabitants, had been intensely impacted via the results of climate alternate, experiencing growing temperatures, 12 months-on-yr droughts and rampant desertification.
at the stop of may, the country’s general water reserves have been at their lowest stage in 80 years.
on the slopes above Dukan lies the village of Sarsian, in which Hussein Khader Sheikhah, fifty seven, became planting a summer time crop on a hectare of land.
The farmer stated he hoped a short-time period summer season crop of the kind commonly planted inside the area for an autumn harvest — cucumbers, melons, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and beans — could assist him offset some of the losses over the iciness due to drought.
In winter, in some other region close to the village, he planted 13 hectares particularly of wheat.
“The harvest failed due to the dearth of rain,” he defined, adding that he misplaced an equal of almost $five,700 to the negative yield.
“i’m able to’t make up for the lack of 13 hectares with simply one hectare near the river,” he added.
– ‘Stricter rationing’ –
The water shortage at Dukan has affected round 4 million people downstream within the neighbouring Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk governorates, consisting of their access to consuming water.
For more than a month, water treatment plant life in Kirkuk were looking to mitigate a unexpected, forty percent drop in the materials achieving them, according to local water resource legit Zaki Karim.
In a country ravaged by means of many years of battle, with crumbling infrastructure and floundering public rules, residents already receive water intermittently.
The today’s shortages are forcing even “stricter rationing” and more infrequent water distributions, Karim stated.
in addition to going door-to-door to raise focus about water waste, the government had been additionally cracking down on illegal get entry to to the water network.
inside the province of roughly million population, the goal is to minimise the effect at the provincial capital of Kirkuk.
“If a few treatment plants experience deliver problems, we can make certain that there are not any general interruptions, so every body can get hold of their percentage,” Karim stated.
