Baku. Real Jafarli APA. Saving Urmia lake with the water of Araz River is a pretext, Head of the Iranian West Azerbaijan Province's Environment Organization Hassan Abbasnejad said,APAreports citing ISNA.
To him, the project on transferring the water of Araz River into Urmia lake is realized only to develop agriculture, mastery and tourism: Dont the persons, who realize this project for such purpose, know that the agriculture will be ruined after Urmia lake dries up?
Abbasnejad said that at present time, only 1/3 part of Urmia lake remains: And after it dries up the salt of the lake will cover the entire Iran, including Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Mashhad and Tehran provinces.
Head of the Iranian West Azerbaijan Province's Environment Organization stressed that 24 projects have been implemented to save Urmia lake from environmental disaster up now.
The project on water transfer of the Araz River to Lake Urmia was started in Julfa in the west of Iran's East Azerbaijan province on July 27. The purpose of the project is to meet water demand of the population in 22 towns and 286 villages, provide the required amount of water for Lake Urmia and create conditions for modern irrigation methods of the sown areas there.