Jordan to Build Canal Connecting the Dead Sea with the Red Sea

In a region known for its deserts, water shortages and tension among neighbours, Jordan announced plans to build an eye-popping $10 billion desalination plant that would provide fresh water for the parched Jordanian population, as well as help replenish the shrinking Dead Sea. Due to up-stream irrigation removal and drinking water consumption from the Jordan River, the Dead Sea has seen its water levels drop by about a metre a year, and at current rates the Dead Sea will have disappeared in the next 50 odd years.

Tourist losses from people not being able to float in the Dead Sea notwithstanding, the Dead Sea forms an important link with humanity’s past, is a significant land form, as well as hosting a unique ecosystem. Saving the Dead Sea has therefore become an important regional initiative. Unfortunately, talks between Israel and Jordan to construct a “Red-Dead” canal linking the Dead Sea with the Red Sea have been fitful. The Red-Dead Canal has also not been without controversy, as environmental groups have raised concern with the dangers inherent to the Dead Sea’s coral life, its unique ecosystem, as well as potentially reducing the buoyancy of its water (to the consternation of multiple nearby resort operators).

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The Jordan National Red Sea Water Development Project has been estimated that it will provide 120 million cubic metres (mcm) of water annually in its first phase (2014) and expanding to 700mcm annually over the next 25-30 years.

The first phase of the project would take Red Sea water to a desalination plant in Aqaba on the Red Sea coast, and would discharge its saline brine into the nearby Dead Sea. Meanwhile, Ministry of Water and Irrigation Secretary General Maysoun Zu’bi said the Jordan National Red Sea Water Development Project “is not a replacement for the Red-Dead Canal Project”.

“The project is Jordanian and will be built on Jordanian land… The World Bank environmental and feasibility studies of the Red-Dead Canal Project are vital for our scheme.”

In other words, it is possible that in a few years, both the National Red Sea Water Development Project as well as the Red-Dead Canal may be desalinating water for regional consumption as well as pumping waste brine water to replenish the Dead Sea. What the effect of either (let alone both) of these water projects will have on the Dead Sea will be theorized in environmental assessments, but will probably remain unknown until they occur.

Image: Dead Sea by hoyasmeg via Flickr’s Media Commons

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