Iran allots funds to transfer water inland from Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf
Iran's budget bill for the next year has allocated 540 trillion rials (about $44 billion) to transfer water from the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf to central parts of the country, ISNA news agency reported.
According to the bill, some 200 million cubic meters of water is projected to be transferred per year to the central parts of the country.
The project will be started in the next Iranian calendar year which begins on March 21, and completed by March 2016.
On February 27, the Iranian administration submitted the budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year.
In October 2012, the Iranian energy ministry received the necessary permission to transfer water from the Caspian Sea to central parts of the country, an official at the ministry said.
AlirezaDaemi told ISNA that any financial and technical problems of the plan have been removed.
Two similar water transfer plans have been developed, he said adding that one is the transfer of water from the Oman Sea in the south to Kerman and Yazd provinces and the other is the transfer of water from the Caspian Sea in the north to Semnan province.
Meanwhile on June 6, speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani sent a letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to cancel a section of the legislation on transferring the Caspian Sea's water to Central Iran.
In his letter, Larijani cites two legal problems with the government's actions in the Caspian Sea Water transfer project. One of these is that the government's funding for the project exceeds the ceiling set in the previous year's budget law and second the administration's cancellation of the bidding process on the project is contrary to the law.
The Caspian Sea water transfer project would send 500 million cubic meters of desalinated water from the Caspian to Central Iran annually.