are privately owned. The drilling of wells is subject to license. Recently, the licensing has stopped for fear of over-exploitation of the aquifer. It appears that no operational rules are applied to the wells. In the fringe lands, the water table is shallow because the discharge capacity of the aquifer diminishes here for two reasons: (1) the hydraulic gradient reduces where the sloping alluvial fan reaches the flat desert area, and (2) the thickness and hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer diminishes. The necessary drainage canals for watertable control at the fringes of the irrigation perimeter are not maintained by the water authority, but by the respective farmers groups. For the irrigation water, these groups depend (1) on occasional river floods too large to be handled by the irrigation system and that flow down to the fringe lands through the natural watercourses, (2) on spillage from the irrigation system, and (3) on deep wells. To stabilize the agriculture in the fringe lands, which are threatened by soil salinization, a method of strip-cropping (Fig. G4) can be recommended for soil salinity control. This method uses irrigated strips next to permanently un-irrigated strips, whereby the salinization is directed to the un-irrigated strips. This concept is sometimes called sacrificial drainage''. Transfer from Persian Gulf As of 2021, Pipeline transport lines links (using desalination techniques) Persian Gulf to Yazd in central Iran. Other similar projects have been launched linking Isfahan, Mashhad or Zahedan to littoral water sources. Project to transfer Caspian Sea water to central regions According to the plan, water will be transferred from Sari to the city of Semnan within 24 months (starting April 2012). The plan aims to provide central provinces with water for industrial and agricultural purposes at a cost of $1.5 billion. Once the plan comes on stream, some 500 million cubic meters of water will be transferred per annum. After desalination at the point of origin in the Caspian sea, it will be transported through a pipeline to the central Kavir desert, bringing about 200 million cubic meters (7,062 cubic feet) of water per year. Nearly 14 percent Iran's territory is desert and suffers from prolonged droughts. The Caspian Sea is shared by Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Its salinity is about a third of that of sea water. More ambitious projects have been envisaged or proposed in recent years, such as transferring water by digging a canal