Lar Dam (Persian: سد لار sad-de lār) is a dam located at the foot of Mount Damavand in Amol county, Mazandaran, Iran. The dam is located within the protected Lar National Park, and situated just 70 kilometers northeast of the capital and the most populous city of the country, Iran. The primary purpose of the dam is municipal water supply to Tehran but prior to the water reaching the city filtration plant, it is used to power the Kalan and Lavarak Hydroelectric Power Stations, with a combined installed capacity of 162.5 MW.
The construction began on the dam in 1974, and ended four years later in 1981. When the reservoir began in 1980, leakage was discovered downstream. The leakage is due to a karst foundation. The foundation was grouted from 1983 until 1989 with no success.[1] 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.
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 MCM (million cubic metres) of water from groundwater resources of the city.[3]
