The most interesting part is that Minas Gerais has unusual top-of-the-hill aquifers, instead of in valleys. The rare mineral formation in its mountain tops collects water and only slowly dispenses it to the subsoil, keeping its quality.[0] Needless to say, unfortunately I hold very little hope for it, considering it also sits on some of the most desirable iron ore deposits in the world.

[0] https://www.projetopreserva.com.br/post/os-raros-aquiferos-d... (in Portuguese)

I hope the rulers solve this problem as quickly as possible without causing pain to the civilians.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/irn/ira... says Iran’s population today is over five times that of 1950.

It also is a safe bet that water consumption per capita went up, too.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if qanats couldn’t support current water usage.

Maybe that “coincided” doesn’t imply “they stopped using qanats, so the water table dropped” but “qanats weren’t sufficient anymore, so they started drilling deep wells, and the water table dropped”?

The saddest thing about Iran I’ve noticed is the stark contrast between the current state of the country and the intelligence of the people I’ve met from this country.

It's quite something they are envisioning a 100 billion dollar project to move the capital instead of limiting water waste in desert agriculture and closing Tehran's water loop by reclaiming sewage, greatly reducing the net demand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhCNpX3s-D8

This editorial elaborates on some of the political corruption, as well as Iran's dismantling of cooperation with foreign water engineers.

- Bill Mollison

This can be seen as the knock on effects from the downfall of the Persian and Ottoman empires, and to a greater extent the destruction of the Persian civilization as the leader in the Middle East, replaced by the British and later American empires.

Water depletion and failure is but one small symptom of their civilizational decline. These issues wouldn't have been circumvented by better planning, it was to some extent written in the sky that this would come to pass. How can they support the needed infrastructure spending and policy goals, not being a leading global power? For example, not being able to control inflows from neighboring countries, or have the USD or trading partners available to pay to import food.

Rural Californians put up signs that say we’re “wasting most of the water in the river” by which they mean our policy of allowing the river to flow into the ocean.

We should look to places with less intelligent geoengineering to see what would happen if we were so foolish. Their combination of resourcefulness and low-IQ will show us what happens when we prioritize extraction alone.

> Qanats are gently sloping tunnels dug into hillsides in riverless regions to tap underground water, allowing it to flow out into valleys using gravity alone. They have long sustained the country’s farmers, as well as being until recently the main source of water for cities such as Tehran, Yazd, and Isfahan. But today only one in seven fields are irrigated by the tunnels.

> Iran has an estimated 70,000 of these structures, most of which are more than 2,500 years old.

2500 years old is roughly the beginning of Persia, with the conquest by Cyrus. If the network is mostly older than that, Iran may have a tradition of using them, but it doesn't seem to have much of a tradition of building them.

$100B is such a high number that it becomes funny money but… idk, doesn’t it still feel like a lowball in terms of losses?

Amusing/telling/sad how these self proclaimed anti-imperialist Islamists cargo culted western technohubris just the same

Gonabad qanat network, reputedly the world’s largest, extends for more than 20 miles beneath the Barakuh Mountains of northeast Iran. The tunnels are more than 3 feet high, reach a depth of a thousand feet, and are supplied by more than 400 vertical wells for maintenance.

The Iranian mullahs locked up everyone who warned them about the upcoming water crisis.

Simple as that.

Tldr: City that outgrew its water supply recommends moving to a place with more water.

Although you wouldn't really get that from reading the article, which seems more about blaming people for Tehrans rapid growth and weather conditions.