ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A $423-million water project to connect the Dukan Lake in Sulaimani province to the city of Sulaimani is set to be signed on Sunday, a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) water official told The New Region.

Aiming to resolve Sulaimani's water shortage issues for the next 30 years, the project will provide nearly half a million cubic meters of water per day to the city. 

Ari Ahmed, head of the Kurdistan Region’s Water and Sewerage Department, told The New Region on Sunday that the Sulaimani-Dukan water project's contract "will be signed today," and that the land allocated for the project will be handed over to the company within a week to begin implementation "as soon as possible."

The project is set to have a storage capacity of 20,000 cubic meters of water per hour, Ahmed told The New Region in late September, noting that in the first phase, the project will provide "10,000 cubic meters [per day]."

Kurdistan Region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani previously decided to increase the budget dedicated to the Dukan-Sulaimani water project from an initial $293 million to $423 million.

In addition to Sulaimani, Ahmed noted that a similar project in Duhok's Bardarash is set to provide clean water to over 70 villages and 3 subdistricts at a cost of nearly $300 million, with water projects planned for Duhok's Akre and Erbil's Khabat districts as well.

The projects follow the inauguration of Erbil's $480-million water project earlier in September by Barzani, which is considered the largest water project in the Kurdistan Region and could save Erbil from water scarcity for at least another 20 years.

The KRG’s water projects come at a time of increased regional water scarcity issues, bringing Iraqi and Turkish officials together for multiple rounds of talks, the latest of which came when Foreign Ministers Fuad Hussein and Hakan Fidan met on Friday in Ankara earlier in the week.

During the meeting, Fidan said that Ankara will explore ways that it can cooperate with Baghdad despite its own local water shortages.