Sivand Dam

Sivand Dam is a dam built in 2007 in Fars Province, Iran. Named after the nearby town of Sivand located northwest of Shiraz, it was the center of worldwide concern because of the flooding it would cause in historical and archaeologically rich areas of Ancient Persia and possible harm it may cause to the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Persepolis and Pasargadae.

The Iranian government planned Sivand Dam for over 10 years, with a location on the Polvar River in the Tangeh Bolaghi (Bolaghi Gorge) in between the ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae. Intended to allow irrigation in the arid region, the planning and initial site construction began in 1992, then was stopped for further planning and was reactivated in 2003.

For the first decade, much of the planning was not made public; Iran's own Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization (ICHO) was not aware of total area of flooding until 2003. When the intentions for the dam were made public, international concern was raised regarding damage to any archaeological sites, particularly the two World Heritage Sites. Rumors spread that the dam would place the two ruins under water, spurring outcry and petitions of concerned experts and individuals. Scientists with the dam project dismissed the rumors outright, and Iranian officials pointed some blame for the rumors on the political opposition parties from outside Iran. Iranian Ministry of Energy studies have placed the furthest reaches of the lake approximately 7 kilometers to south of the plain of Murqab; that is 9 kilometers from Pasargadae and more than 70 kilometers from Persepolis.

However, Iranian officials from the Ministry of Energy and ICHO did acknowledge that the lake will flood 130 Persian archeological sites and invited international teams to help excavate the area before construction commenced. In 2004, the United Nations issued an urgent international appeal for archaeologists to join the domestic effort to unearth and record what they could before the flooding. Teams from Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the United States responded to the request for help.

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