Lake Urmia – How to not manage water

Lake Urmia is a great example of bad management by the government.
Lake Urmia is located in north-western Iran and is one of the saltiest lakes in the world.
It’s so salty that you can easily lie on the water there.
Lake Urmia used to be a tourist attraction, was used by migrant birds as a stop on their way to the south or north.
It used to cover land twice the size of Luxemburg. However, by 2017, in less than 30 years,
it had lost more than 90% of its water. What happened? 

Scientists think that climate change and a dry period has had a direct effect,
but it couldn’t have such a big effect in a short period of time.
One of the biggest factors was the government’s attempt to expand the agricultural programs.
So, they constructed 74 small and big dams on the rivers that flowed into the lake.
They also allowed people to dig hundreds of deep wells to water their fields,
which were often apple farms and consumed too much water.

The government did very little to stop rich people who had big mansions and gardens around the city from digging deep wells. These people dug the wells to use them for their swimming pools and gardens, which led to a decrease in the amount of groundwater and the water that flowed into the lake.

The government also continued the project of building a road and a bridge across the lake,
which had been started a long time before.
They dug a mountain nearby and poured the rocks into the lake to create this causeway.
It divided the northern and southern parts of the lake and made the drying process faster.