Pictures of Cheshmeh Ali spring in Rey, Tehran province, have been published, showing this thousands-years-old spring completely dry. ISNA’s field investigation also confirms the dried ponds of this spring now become a place of garbage accumulation.
Rey’s Cheshmeh Ali was a place for children to swim and play in the summers, but with the drying up of this spring, which some estimate it to be 8000 years old, no sign can be found of children playing there. Last week, Hasan Khalilabadi, a former member of the Tehran City Council, published a video of Cheshmeh Ali Rey, which showed that it had completely dried up.
Children who used to spend their long summer vacations swimming in this spring water, told ISNA that since the beginning of the year, the water in Cheshmeh Ali became less and less until, in the middle of summer, no trace of water could be seen anymore, and the spring completely dried up.
Not long ago Deputy Director of Tehran Crisis Prevention and Management Organization confirmed that issues such as the construction of Tehran Metro Line 6, water wells, digging trenches for construction purposes, and also the city’s urban sewerage system, were among the factors of the drying up of this 8,000-year-old spring; These are the issues that cultural heritage activists had repeatedly warned about their role in the drying up of this natural heritage, while some authorities denied the subway playing any role in the drying u[ of this spring and only considered “drought” to be the only reason for the temporary shutdown of the eight-thousand-year-old spring.
Cheshmeh Ali spring is the first registered urban natural heritage and Tehran Province’s 3rd natural heritage. This spring has dried up thrice in the past. However, previously, water was still seen in parts of the ponds, but this time the ponds have fully dried, and garbage is lying where water would flow.
This spring once was almost dry, at the beginning of the 90s (2010). The second time, with the start of the Tehran Metro Line 6 project, the water flow decreased again because cultural heritage experts believed that with the tunnel digging and the operation of the machine (TBM) Metro, spring water changed its course, but after protests made by heritage activists and the native people of that area, the metro project stopped, and the water level rose to some extent. In 1396, with the pursuit of cultural heritage, Tehran and Rey city councils, the conditions of Cheshmeh improved a little. Still, at the end of the spring of 1402, Cheshmeh Ali went dry again. Now it is scorched, while the cultural heritage officials of Tehran and Rey in the past few months, at the same time as the news of the drying up of Cheshmeh Ali spring was published in various media, they did not react to this event and did not respond to the calls of journalists.
However, in his most recent meeting, the Deputy Director of Tehran’s crisis prevention and management organization required all the involved institutions to follow up on the rescue of Cheshmeh Ali on priority basis. All governmental and judicial powers are required to take necessary steps to save the spring.
