No water shortages for Istanbul: İSKİ

ISTANBUL – Anadolu Agency

AA photo

Istanbul’s long-term water supply is guaranteed according to Fatih Yıldız, the head of the Istanbul Waterworks Authority’s (İSKİ) Water Purification Directorate, who said Feb. 4 that the reservoir behind the city’s largest dam, Ömerli, was nearly full and the city could expect to enter the summer at full capacity. 

“The Ömerli dam is currently 90 percent full and it also serves as a source for facilities that provide water to a great deal of the city [Istanbul], both on the Anatolian and the European side,” Yıldız told Anadolu Agency.

“We plan to enter the summer season with a 100 percent capacity rate,” he said.

The official underlined the capacity rate of the Ömerli dam reservoir was the biggest indicator, as some 2.7 million cubic meters of water is consumed in Istanbul every day and the dam’s capacity stands at some 250 million cubic meters.

The capacity of the water purification facility at the Ömerli dam is over 1.5 million cubic meters, he added.

Yıldız praised the ongoing Melen dam project, which is currently half finished and will begin operations on Dec. 7, saying he hoped the dam would begin storing water by the summer.

Yıldız also stated the construction of a total of five more dams, two on the city’s Anatolian side and three on its European side, were in the planning stages. With these new dams Istanbul’s water capacity is expected to exceed 2 billion cubic meters, Yıldız said. 

“Some of the dams are in the planning process and some of them are in the project process. The names of the dams on the European side will be İsabeyli, Hamzalı and Karamandere, while the ones in the Anatolian side will be named Sungurlu and İsaköy. There will also be some two hundred water pumps in the dams which will draw water if the dams’ water levels become too low. This system is operating in the Ömerli dam, as we can store water for up to 15 days,” Yıldız said.