ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Water reserves in the Kurdistan Region’s dams have dropped to below 30 percent due to poor rainfall and ongoing drought, a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) official warned on Tuesday, noting that Dukan Dam has been hit hardest.
“Overall, dam water levels are between 25 and 30 percent,” Rahman Khani, head of the Dams and Water Reservoirs Department at the agriculture ministry, told Rudaw. “It is true that both Dukan and Darbandikhan still hold nearly one billion cubic meters of water, but part of that is dead storage and cannot be used.”
After last year’s limited rainfall and delayed precipitation this season, the Region’s main strategic dams - Dukan, Darbandikhan, and Duhok - have all seen substantial declines.
Khani said that “for the first time in 10 years, Dukan Dam’s water level has fallen this low,” but emphasized that it is still too early to declare a drought, as the peak months for water inflow are February, March, and April.
The KRG is currently working on six new dam projects - Dwin and Bani Talaban in Erbil, Zalan and Chaq-Chaq in Sulaimani, and Bawenur and Khornawazan in Garmiyan - with a combined storage capacity of 180 million cubic meters. However, Khani noted that the main obstacle to progress is a lack of cash liquidity.
“Our problem is not the budget allocation - it’s the banks,” he said. “When contractors attempt to collect their payments, they face liquidity shortages that prevent the release of funds, stalling the projects.”
He added that the government aims to increase the capacity of Mandawa Dam from 330 million cubic meters to one billion, and is also moving forward with the Bardasor Dam, described as “very important for Garmiyan,” but expressed frustration with Baghdad’s lack of response to their proposals.
The Kurdistan Region and Iraq are grappling with a severe water crisis driven by historically low water storage, worsened by declining rainfall and upstream dam projects in Turkey and Iran. The situation has caused drought conditions in areas such as Sulaimani and Duhok, prompting some residents to leave water-scarce villages. In response, the KRG is implementing emergency projects in Erbil and Sulaimani to ease shortages and improve access to potable water.
Iraq consumes over 80 percent of its available water supplies and is ranked among the 25 most water-stressed countries in the world, according to the World Resources Institute.
The country relies heavily on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but major Turkish dam projects - including the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) - have reduced water flow to less than 40 percent of historic levels. Reduced rainfall, rising temperatures, upstream dams, and decades of mismanagement have further deepened the crisis.
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