Iranian Minister of Energy, Reza Ardakanian said on Tuesday that the value of recent flood is up to 2.5 billion dollars as five billion cubic meters of free and fresh water filled the dams throughout the country.
Speaking to Iran’s channel one, Ardakanian said: “the two recent floods in gathered more than five billion cubic meters of fresh water in dams and that can be used for agriculture, drinking and industry.”
Massive floods hit Northern as well as southern and western parts of Iran for days, leading to a serious national crisis.
“This amount of water is not harvestable from underground water resources,’’ Ardakanian explained. “If we wanted to obtain this amount of water, we had to desalinate sea water which according to today’s price of desalinating sea water, it would cost 2.5 billion dollars.”
According to the official reports, a number of 66 people died, thousands of houses destructed and hundreds of thousands of farms inundated as a result of the recent floods.
The government is highly criticized among people for their lack of efficiency and ability to manage the crisis and rescue people in inundated areas.
