Lar Dam - Construction

Construction

The construction began on the dam in 1974, and ended four years later in 1981. With the population growth occurring in Amol, there was a need for more water and energy. The ideal place for the dam was over the Lar river, in the northeast section of the city, at the elevated heights of the Kalanbasteh mountain on the slope of Mount Damavand. The area is called Polour, and operations began in 1984.

One of the aims for building the Lar dam was to supply part of Amol with drinking water; it was not possible initially to operate the dam at its nominal capacity, because of a water seepage problem. Water stored in the dam's reservoir is transferred to the Kalan and Lavark power plants, a distance of 3 kilometers from the Latyan Dam's reservoir, through the 20 kilometer long Kalan tunnel (3 meters in size). After electricity generation, the water joins and feeds the Latyan dam's reservoir.

Uncontrolled growth and expansion of Tehran created a situation where the existing water resources at Karaj, Latyan and Lar dams and the deep wells which were supposed to be exploited only in the during the peak water consumption period. These were no longer capable of meeting the city's water demand, so inevitable abstraction from ground resources started to increase in a manner that at the present situation, the quantity of drilled deep wells has amounted to 230 rings. In fact, from 1997-2000, it had been orderly abstracted, 317, 289, 374 and 357 Mm3 of water from groundwater resources of the city.