Yousef Ghaffarzadeh said that the East Azarbaijan Regional Water Authority succeeded in reviving Iran’s submerged land in Jolfa city, which was out of reach because of seasonal floods of the Aras River, adding that the development happened based on protocols agreed between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Azarbaijan to return the land to its previous state.
Pointing to the credit needed to organize the prioritized areas of the Aras River as much as 600 billion Rials, noting that the project of organizing the Aras River is underway in eight kilometers of Jolfa city towards Khoda-Afarin, including the construction of a 3.75 km dyke, the dredging one kilometer of the river and the construction of a diversion road.
He also emphasized that nine emergent areas of the Aras River have been identified in East Azarbaijan province, adding that the length of the risky waterways is 16 km, which include villages of Ibrahim Sami, Asheghlou and Boydouz.
Stressing the need for protecting the strategic border road and fertile agricultural land along the river as the important objective of the project, he said that given the fact that the river slope and seasonal floods from March to June cause the flow rate to surpass 1800 cubic meters per second; so, soil erosion is inevitable.
He expressed hope that the East Azarbaijan Regional Water Authority would be able to achieve the aforementioned goal within the next 45 days.
The aim of such projects in provinces with border rivers is that the provincial authorities could control flood damages, prevent soil erosion and revive diminishing land under the supervision of the Secretariat for the Border Rivers Coordination Committee of the Ministry of Energy, he added.
Ghaffarzadeh went on to say that the committee comprises representatives of the Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Energy, Agricultural Jihad, Defense and the Plan and Budget Organization and Border Police Command, which supervises all projects and monitors border protocols between Iran and its neighbor states.
Within the last 30 years, Iran succeeded in securing 61 km of high-risk areas of the Aras River in northwestern Iran; thus, some 1,250 hectares of inaccessible land on the joint borders with the Republic of Azarbaijan returned to Iran, he said, adding that as a result of these efforts, about 60,000 hectares of land are safe now.
The Aras River in northwestern Iran stems from the Min Gull Mountains in Turkey and 248 km of the river is located in East Azarbaijan province of the Islamic Republic; after going forward 450 km in Iran and joining the Kora River in the Republic of Azarbaijan, the river ends in the Caspian Sea.
1424
Follow us on Twitter @irnaenglish
Your Comment