Iraq’s second largest lake drying up, turning up useless fish

Iraq’s Razzaza Lake was as soon as a vacationer attraction recognized for its stunning surroundings and an abundance of fish that locals relied on. Now, useless fish litter its shores and the once-fertile lands round it have became a barren desert.

One of Iraq’s largest lakes, the man-made Razzaza is seeing a big decline in water ranges and has been hit by air pollution and excessive ranges of salinity.

“During the 1980s and 1990s, the Razzaza Lake was a source of livelihood, it had fish including the yellowfin barbel, binni and carp because the water (level) was good,” says fisherman Saleh Abboud. “But now it has dried up.”

Razzaza Lake is the most recent sufferer of a water disaster in Iraq, generally known as the “Land Between the Two Rivers”, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Upstream dams in Turkey, Syria and Iran have shrunk the rivers and their tributaries, seasonal rainfall has dropped and infrastructure has fallen into disrepair.

Hundreds of households used to depend on fishing the Razzaza for his or her livelihood. Now the variety of useless fish that turns up is larger than the variety of stay fish they’ll catch.

An Iraqi fisherman collects useless fish close to Razzaza Lake, also called Lake Milh, Arabic for salt, within the Karbala governorate of Iraq, February 14, 2022. (AP)

Razzaza Lake, also called Lake Milh, Arabic for Salt Lake, is positioned between Iraq’s governorates of Anbar and Karbala. It’s the second largest lake in Iraq and is a part of a large valley that features the lakes of Habbaniyah, Tharthar and Bahr al-Najaf.

The lake was constructed as a measure to manage floods within the Euphrates and for use as enormous reservoir for irrigation functions. Iraqis and vacationers frequented the lake as a leisure spot to chill down throughout Iraq’s sizzling summers.

Not anymore, with the lake getting smaller yearly.

In current years, it has been affected not solely by the water scarcity however by drought, neglect and elevated evaporation throughout Iraq’s sizzling summers. It has additionally been hit by air pollution as a result of diversion of sewage water into the lake and the theft of water quotas allotted to it.

“The lake cannot be used for the purposes of operating water resources because we do not have sufficient quantities of water to boost the Razzaza Lake,” stated Aoun Diab Abdullah, an adviser on the Ministry of Water Resources.