Water flows through the intake structure at the Northern Jazira Irrigation Project pumping station, which the Ministry of Water Resources says is operating normally and not affected by the alleged Mosul Dam drought.
Iraq’s water ministry denies social media reports of Mosul Dam drying up
MOSUL — Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources has rejected social media claims that the Mosul Dam has dried up, calling the circulated footage “inaccurate” and unrelated to the dam.
“The videos shared by some social media pages, which depict a dried area around a concrete structure, are of an unknown location and have nothing to do with the Mosul Dam site,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said teams had surveyed the dam’s reservoir and the area extending to the pumping station for the Northern Jazira Irrigation Project, more than 40 kilometers north of the dam, without finding any site matching the video. “This site has no connection to the Mosul Dam or its reservoir, and we do not know if it is inside Iraq or outside,” the statement said.
The ministry also released video showing water flowing through the main pumping station of the Northern Jazira Irrigation Project and into the Tigris River’s main channel.
On July 24, the ministry said Iraq is facing its worst drought in nearly a century, with national water reserves at just 8% of total storage capacity. It blamed reduced releases from upstream countries and climate change for a sharp drop in water storage. Inflows to the Tigris and Euphrates basins are at 27% of last year’s levels, with total reserves down 57% year-on-year. Central and southern governorates are seeing the most severe shortages.
The Mosul Dam, on the Tigris River in Nineveh governorate, is Iraq’s largest dam and a key source of water storage and hydroelectric power. It regulates river flow and supplies irrigation to farmland in the north.