Nineveh Provincial Council member Mohammed Ahris warned of stopping work on the Al-Jazeera Irrigation Project, which is one of the strategic irrigation projects in the country, due to the decline in the amount of water releases from Mosul Dam Lake .
Ahris said, “Mosul Dam Lake is the strategic water reserve for Nineveh Governorate and all of Iraq. It feeds the Al-Jazeera Irrigation Project, which in turn irrigates more than 240,000 dunums of agricultural land planted with wheat, barley, potatoes, tomatoes, sunflower seeds and other crops .”
He added, “The Al-Jazeera irrigation project, which is one of the most important irrigation projects in Iraq, will soon stop working due to drought, lack of rain, and the small amount of water imports from the Turkish side, and more importantly, the increase in the amount of water released from the Mosul Dam Lake,” indicating that “the amount of water coming from the Turkish side is estimated at 170 cubic meters per second, while the amount of water discharged from the Mosul Dam Lake exceeds 500 cubic meters per second .”
The Nineveh Council member also pointed out that “the decline in water quantities in the dam lake threatens to stop work on the Al-Jazeera irrigation project, thus damaging large areas of agricultural land and harming a large number of families who live on agriculture in that area .”
Ahris called on the concerned authorities to “take urgent measures to ensure the continuation of work on the Al-Jazeera irrigation project and to prevent the water levels in the dam lake from declining to ensure the continuity of work on the most important irrigation project in Iraq .”
Mosul Dam, which was built in 1988 , is one of the largest dams built in Iraq, and is ranked fourth as one of the largest dams in the Middle East. This dam provides water and electricity to more than one million Iraqis .
Iraq has been suffering from a severe water crisis for several years due to the scarcity of water revenues from upstream countries, in addition to the scarcity of rain, which has led to a severe decline in the levels of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The crisis reached its peak in the previous years, with the country witnessing the drying up of a number of rivers and marshes this year.
