Fifth largest dam in Kurdistan to be operational before 2020

Construction on the fifth largest Dam in the Kurdistan Region is to be completed by Nov. 2019, according to a local official.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Construction on the fifth largest Dam in the Kurdistan Region is to be completed by Nov. 2019, according to a local official.

Akram Mohammed, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Director for Dams and Water Resources, on Tuesday said the “Dewana dam in Darbandikhan is to be operational in November 2019, with the capacity of storing up to 22 million cubic meters of water annually.”

The dam is being built on the Dewana River in the province of Sulaimani and will be the fifth largest dam in Kurdistan, in terms of storage capacity, after Dokan, Derbandikhan, Duhok, Awa-spi, Mohammed explained. 

The Kurdish official also said, the dam would be “contributing to water security in Kurdistan, and benefitting the local population and farmers in Derbandikhan.” 

The dam’s construction started in 2011 but the economic crisis in the Kurdistan Region in the following years hindered access to adequate funding in development and infrastructure work.

The Kurdistan Region, which has witnessed ongoing prosperity and security over the past decades compared to other parts of Iraq, suffered a critical economic crisis from 2014 until 2017.

The crisis emerged in 2014 after the Federal Government of Iraq cut the KRG’s share of the national budget, as well as the fight against the Islamic State, and the influx of 1.8 million refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Syria and other parts of Iraq to the Kurdistan Region.

Analysts have long called on successive governments to implement policies, among others, that raise awareness and incentivize the public to ration their water usage. The KRG has taken initial steps in recent years, but change has been sluggish.

Editing by Nadia Riva