Saving the Dead Sea—Red, Med or the Jordan River?

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The Dead Sea is falling about 3 feet per year. Wide swaths of beach and plant growth occupy what used to be filled with Dead Sea brine. Hotels and spas have seemingly retreated from the shores that once provided nearby access to guests wanting to float in the sea or smear themselves with its therapeutic mud.

The surface of the Dead Sea now stands at 1,380 feet below sea level. While fluctuations from natural causes have been known over millennia, today’s rapid fall is largely the result of human intervention, as Syria, Jordan and Israel have siphoned off for domestic and agricultural use much of the natural replenishment of water that used to flow into the Jordan River and from there into the Dead Sea. Tina Niemi gives the “good” news: The fall of the Dead Sea will probably bottom out in about 100 years as evaporation from the highly concentrated brine—the only way water leaves the Dead Sea—will have stopped.

Three options have been considered in recent years to replenish the water of the Dead Sea—code-named Med-Dead, Red-Dead and the Jordan River option. The first two involve building canals from the Mediterranean or Red Sea as carriers for water to the Dead Sea. The Med-Dead option, which was once very popular, is off the table—at least for now. Until very recently the Red Sea canal was the only one being seriously promoted by the governments of Israel and Jordan and the World Bank, which will fund the project. Recent pressure, however, by environmental NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and Israeli citizens has pushed forward what is described as the most “natural” option, the one with the least potential for ecological damage. This option would restore some of the original flow from the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River by providing alternative sources of water for domestic and agricultural needs. A statement by the head of the Environment Committee of Israel’s Knesset and a resolution before the U.S. Senate are both asking that the Jordan River alternative be studied as seriously as the Red-Dead canal.

The Red-Dead canal plan would lift water 600 feet from the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba, the long eastern finger that stretches north from the Red Sea, and then drop it 1,800 feet to flow into the Dead Sea. The energy generated from the fall of the water could be used to desalinate Red Sea water for use in Jordan. The Israeli government sees this as a “peace project” leading to greater cooperation with Jordan. But, at a public hearing held by the World Bank in Jerusalem in August, organized by the Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), an NGO that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists, 40 statements registered opposition to the Red-Dead option until the Jordan River option is studied further. The objections emphasized the potential ecological damage of the Red-Dead option to both seas and also pointed out that the energy gain is likely to be substantially eliminated by the energy required to pump up the water before its fall into the Dead Sea.

From ancient times Dead Sea water came from springs and rivers that flowed into the Sea of Galilee and from there to the Jordan River. In recent decades, however, these waters have been diverted as human needs increased. Some of this flow would be restored in the Jordan River option by substituting desalinated Mediterranean water for water presently being diverted from the Dead Sea’s natural water sources. Desalination plants are already on line in two Israeli coastal cities. By 2012, with additional plants, two-thirds of Israel’s household water may be supplied by desalinated water. Jordan, too, has a national plan for desalination, conservation and negotiation with Syria to reduce Syria’s water diversion from the Yarmuk River before it reaches the Jordan River.

In addition, raising the price of water to farmers (through at least partial elimination of subsidies) would encourage them to grow products requiring less water. And of course additional conservation measures would also reduce the amount of water siphoned off before it reaches the Dead Sea.

FoEME director Gidon Bromberg says that, since the hearing in August, the World Bank is “under tremendous scrutiny. It is increasingly difficult to ignore the Jordan River option.” Alexander McPhail, Task Team leader for the Red Sea Dead Sea Conveyance Studies at the World Bank observes that the “stakeholders,” Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, are still clarifying what needs to be studied before a decision is made about whether the Dead Sea’s future lies to its north or south.—S.F.S.

The Dead Sea is falling about 3 feet per year. Wide swaths of beach and plant growth occupy what used to be filled with Dead Sea brine. Hotels and spas have seemingly retreated from the shores that once provided nearby access to guests wanting to float in the sea or smear themselves with its therapeutic mud.