ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Darbandikhan dam in Sulaimani province has overflowed after years of drought and water shortage, the dam’s directorate announced on Wednesday.
The directorate announced on Facebook that the dam has overflowed for the first time since 2016. The dam was full in 2019 but did not overflow.
It is the first time the dam has overflowed since the deadly 7.3 magnitude earthquake in November 2017 that rocked Darbandikhan and several other towns in Sulaimani province.
Due to the damage sustained in the earthquake, the dam could not operate at full capacity the following year.
“This [the overflow] tells us that the Darbandikhan Dam, after 63 years, can still withstand the floods and waves, as it did before the earthquake,” read the statement from the Darbandikhan dam directorate.
The authorities also released the waters of the dam, to ease the pressure of the structure. Darbandikhan mayor Sulaiman Mohammed said the release of the water did not cause any significant damage.
“No damage has been recorded due to the release of water from the dam, apart from the submerging of some tourist huts,” Mohammed said.
The Darbandikhan dam, inaugurated in 1961 on the Sirwan River, supplies electricity to several cities and regulates water supplies to vast farmlands in Garmiyan and central Iraq. The dam has a capacity of three billion cubic meters of water.
The dam was last full in 2019, but would later experience years of drought due to lack of rainfall, exacerbated by the dams built on upstream rivers in Iran.
