The Red Sea might save the Dead Sea

Douglas Hamilton, Reuters 19 Mar 09;

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Abundant water from the Red Sea could replenish the shrinking Dead Sea if Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians decide to commission a tunnel north through the Jordanian desert from the Gulf of Aqaba.

The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project would supply the biggest desalination plant in the world, running on its own hydro-electric power and providing Jordan with enough water for the next 40-50 years. Israel and the Palestinian West Bank would also benefit.

A decision on whether to go ahead could come by the end of next year and the likely cost would be in the region of 7 billion dollars.

"The idea of linking the Red Sea and the Dead Sea was first suggested by a British military engineer in the 1880s. That was for hydro-power. But the drivers today are water supply and saving the Dead Sea," said engineer David Meehan , who leads the study team for French consultants Coyne et Bellier.

"Technically and engineering-wise it was always going to be feasible," he told Reuters. "But there are some major issues that could determine its feasibility ultimately."

Three potential systems are being examined: a buried pipeline, a low-level tunnel all the way, and a higher-level tunnel-and-canal system.

Two new feasibility studies are being commissioned by the World Bank this month, acting for the "beneficiary parties," Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

If a tunnel is chosen, it would be about 7-8 meters in diameter. Red Sea water would take about 3-4 days to flow 168 km (105 miles), relying entirely on gravity and dropping some 400 meters below sea level, to the lowest point on earth, where the Dead Sea is rapidly retreating.

Some estimates say it could more or less dry up in 50 years if no action is taken. Its level is falling by about one meter (three feet) per year due to a sharp decrease in inflow from the Jordan and other rivers whose waters now irrigate fields and to Dead Sea chemical industry use by Israel and Jordan.

"The level has fallen from 394 meters below sea level in the 1960s to 420 meters below sea level as of mid-2007," said the World Bank. The water surface area is down by a third, from 950 square kilometers to 637 -- about the size of Lake Geneva.

DIFFERENT PRIORITIES

The World Bank said arresting the decline to avert an environmental calamity, and slowly topping up the sea, is the main priority.

"For Jordan it is a water-supply project," said Meehan. "While for Israel it has perhaps as much to do with regional politics. For them, desalinating Mediterranean water is much more practical."

Nearly half of the 2 billion cubic meters of water flowing north each year through the system would be desalinated and made potable. The brine would go into the Dead Sea, whose waters are 10 times more saline than the ocean.

The tunnel would be on Jordanian territory, following the line of the border with Israel. Jordan and Egypt, Israel's next-door neighbor in the Gulf of Aqaba, are the only two Arab countries which have full relations with the Jewish state, and the project in an earlier incarnation was quickly dubbed the "peace canal."

Meehan, who played an important role in the construction of Libya's "great, man-made river project" and other major infrastructure developments, said he "can't see the project being commissioned before 2020." But its feasibility could be established in a year to 18 months.

The main concerns are the effects on marine life in the Gulf of Aqaba of the extraction of such large volumes of water, the effects of that water mixing with the Dead Sea, and the funding of the project, said Meehan.

In addition, Israel has concerns about potential leakage polluting valuable freshwater aquifers in a desert region where it has developed world-leading techniques for cultivation, and "environmentalists don't like the idea of canals which cut off wildlife migration."

The Palestinians have not even asked formally for a share of the desalinated water, he said, possibly because they do not want to prejudice their existing claims to mountain aquifers" supplying the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

"None of these issues can be separated from politics," he said, although both Jordan and Israel say they could go it alone. But that could involve a dispute in international law and funding would become scarce.

TURNING WHITE, THEN GREEN?

The World Bank this month called for tenders on two additional studies to assess the main environmental, and oceanographic issues.

"The outcome of mixing of these two water bodies over a time scale of decades is unknown and is difficult to model and predict," noted the bank's March 13 draft study preamble.

"Clearly, the Dead Sea will change its composition and characteristics as they are known today or were in the past if it receives large volumes of water from the Red Sea."

Some environmentalist critics warn that tampering with nature on such an unprecedented scale could bring disaster: the Dead Sea mighty turn white as gypsum sediment precipitates, then green as microbial blooms flourish.

The studies should determine if these fears are justified. They will also assess the "do nothing" option, modeling the Dead Sea of 2060.

At a March 5 meeting in the sleepy Israeli Dead Sea resort of Ein Gedi, the beneficiary countries stated their continued support for the project "and urged that it continue to be implemented on an accelerated basis."

Meehan said he had encountered a number of amusing suspicions in his meetings with locals along the projected routes, including a Jordanian who wondered if it was an Israeli plot to realize a Talmudic prophecy that "one day fish will swim in the Dead Sea."

At present, there are only microbial forms of life in the famously buoyant waters, where visitors taking a dip can keep their newspapers intact as they read in the sun and float, high and dry.

The Scottish-born engineer said screening and filtration would remove marine life at the Gulf of Aqaba entry to the system, and treatment would remove tiny microbes at the desalination end, so the water entering the Dead Sea would be sterile.

(Editing by Peter Millership)

Shrinking Dead Sea may lose "natural wonders" bid
Douglas Hamilton, Reuters 19 Mar 09;

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) - A red light flashes over the Dead Sea entry on a website inviting people to vote for the world's top natural wonders, warning: "this nominee is situated in more than one country."

There is no rule against that, but a chance the shrinking sea can win any votes in the election at www.new7wonders.com will vanish if all three countries involved do not each form an "Official Supporting Committee" by July 7.

Either due to bureaucracy or politics, two states are delaying -- which may jeopardize prospects for the famously buoyant lake, about the same size as Lake Geneva, whose level is dropping at nearly one meter a year.

To date, only Israel has a committee. Jordan and the Palestinian Authority have just over three months to make sure the Dead Sea is one of 77 second-round nominees selected, from which a shortlist of 21 finalists will be chosen.

"We're not sure why there's a delay," said Tia Viering, the communications chief for the contest, known as N7W. "The Dead Sea would have a very good chance if nominated, but we can't talk to a lake, and time is running out."

Jordan benefited handsomely from an election in 2007 of seven New Wonders of the World: visits to the ancient ruins of nearby Petra rose by more than 100 percent after it was chosen, said Suleiman Farajat of the Jordanian archaeological park.

Israeli organizer Seffi Hanegbi has no doubts about the reason for delay. "It's 100 percent politics," he said. "We have to have a meeting of the three official representatives. But if the Palestinians know there's a representative from Israel they won't come," he fears.

"It was a mistake to seek official approval at government level. Mayors or NGOs would have had it done by now," he said. It was also a mistake to involve an Israeli council located in the occupied West Bank, and covering Jewish settlements considered illegal by the Palestinians and the United Nations.

Appreciating the Dead Sea valley should be above politics, Hanegbi says.

It has had a place in human history for thousands of years. Some consider it the cradle of civilization -- where the Biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah, on the faultline between two tectonic plates, were destroyed by God for their wickedness -- where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

POTENTIAL RETURNS

Barely a half-hour's drive from the Old City of Jerusalem, downhill all the way to the lowest spot on earth, the traveler finds water 10 times more saline than the ocean. Sunset on the sandstone bluffs of the Jordan Rift Valley frames the sea between towering walls of shifting pastel color.

N7W expects one billion people to vote online in 2010-11 to chose the seven wonders of nature: "This is a low-involvement project for them that has great potential returns," Viering said. Letters to the Palestinians and Jordanians stressed that point and urged quick action.

But in the West Bank, the Palestinians said they were still awaiting clarification before the government could approve.

"In principle we do not have a problem," said Palestinian Authority Tourism Minister Khouloud Daibes. "We are waiting to hear the details and if they have conditions."

"Once we get that, the government should approve it ... I do not think there will be a problem. It's not a political issue."

Viering believes the delays in Amman and Ramallah are purely bureaucratic and will not prove insurmountable.

"The Jordanians have been incredibly enthusiastic and supportive in the past so I expect it will go ahead," she said.

But Hanegbi says if the Palestinians balk for political reasons, Jordan too may fold its hands out of Arab solidarity.

A MUCH TOUGHER PROJECT

Petra and the Dead Sea are a day's drive from each other, and both lie in easy reach of the Gulf of Aqaba's famed Red Sea beach resorts and crystal clear, coral-reef diving waters.

Israel's Hanegbi believes in the power of cross-border tourism to foster peace. In the 1990s he organized camel treks on ancient routes in the region.

Exploiting the business, environmental and tourist potential of such natural assets, and getting around man-made borders is "making peace instead of just talking peace," he says.

He is also striving to enter the Red Sea as a "wonders of nature" candidate: a task requiring endorsement from eight littoral states -- Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen and Djibouti.

Viering believes the delay in the Dead Sea's nomination is simply a bureaucratic glitch. But if not, it could be bad news for any broader rescue project that would require long-term commitment, investment and the approval of Red Sea states.

The real red light flashing for the Dead Sea is the fact it is slowly but surely drying up and could be gone in 50 years if no action is taken.

A sharp decrease in inflow from the Jordan and other rivers whose waters now irrigate fields is curbing its water supply: the level in mid-2007 had fallen to 420 meters below sea level from 394 meters in the 1960s, says the World Bank.

As a result, the water surface area has shrunk by one third.

Arresting the decline to avert environmental calamity, and slowly topping up the sea while supplying more water to this parched region are the main aims of an ambitious rescue project.

The "Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project," promoted by Jordan and Israel and endorsed by the Palestinians, would carry water over a 180 km (112 mile) tunnel-canal route probably visible from space.

First suggested 100 years ago, it is still in the "feasibility study" phase. Two additional studies are now about to begin, one assessing how the waters of the two seas would mix, a second looking at the ecological impact on the Red Sea.

The reports are due in 18 months. By then -- provided the Jordanian and Palestinian committees have formed in time -- the Dead Sea may have been chosen a natural wonder of the world.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi)

(Editing by Sara Ledwith)