IRGC-Made Tunnel to Revive Iran’s Shrinking Lake Urmia

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is making serious effort to keep Lake Urmia from drying up.

Brigadier General Ebadollah Abdollahi, the commander of IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbia Construction Base, says a 36-kilometre tunnel is being dug to revive the shrinking lake.

“If there are no financial problems, it will be completed in 30 months’ time,” he noted, adding that the tunnel will supply the water needed by Lake Urmia.

“Today, the country is facing major challenges in the water sector, including water shortage, because there is no proper management for water consumption,” he said.

He added people demand Lake Urmia be revived.

“This lake had a miserable condition for years, and water levels had tremendously dropped there, leading to numerous environmental problems,” Abdollahi noted.

The project to supply water to Lake Urmia began in 2010. The tunnel is to take excess water from the Glaas River to the lake aimed at reviving the body of water.

Due to a lack of enough financial resources as well as the hard work involved, the project is not progressing according to the scheduled time frame.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Abdollahi touched upon a project to create a green belt along the borders through agricultural development work.

He said some three thousand projects are underway in northwest of the country covering some 500 thousand hectares of land which are to be turned into a “green agricultural belt” to boost agricultural development, create jobs and endure lasting security along the borders.