Melen Water Supply System
Conveyance + treatment, Approximately 1 billion m3/year planned transfer; Bosphorus tunnel stage estimated at 2.8 million m3/day in Turkey.
Awarded
The record
- Country
- Turkey
- Location
- Istanbul
- Coordinates
- 41.050, 29.000
- Technology
- Conveyance + treatment
- Capacity
- Approximately 1 billion m3/year planned transfer; Bosphorus tunnel stage estimated at 2.8 million m3/day
- Capital cost
- —
- Stage
- Awarded
- Owner or client
- DSİ (State Hydraulic Works) / İSKİ
- Contractor
- Limak (completion works, 2026)
- Operator
- —
- Finance
- Government
- Award or start year
- 2027
- Commissioned
- —
Record last checked 2026-09-20.
History
- 2001
First stage of the Great Melen Project starts, diverting Melen Stream water by tunnel and pipeline to the Ömerli Dam
- 2014
Urgent expropriation decisions evacuate Ortaköy and twelve other villages in the planned reservoir area
- 2016
Original target year for completion of the Melen Dam missed
- 2019
Halt of dam construction after cracks in the dam body becomes public
- 2026-06
DSİ awards the completion works to Limak on 11 June 2026, about TRY 14.5 billion, the fourth tender on the dam since 2012
Sources
2 references
Every field in the record above is taken from the references below. A field that none of them confirms prints as a dash.
- Water Alternatives, Kırcı and Aydın, Feeding Istanbul: The Melen water transfer project and the anatomy of a silent environmental conflict, vol. 19 issue 2, 2026 (PDF). water-alternatives.org.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
A Yeni Ankara report of 29 June 2026 on the repeated completion tenders was cited here and has since been taken offline, so it has been removed; nothing in this record rests on it.. The sheet's US$900 million cost is not supported by any fetched source and has been removed.