Jordan pins water hopes on controversial pipeline project

IRIN: Jordan, one of the world’s most water scarce states, is facing a “perfect storm of pressures” including chronic scarcity, over-use, waste, and a massive increase in demand caused by refugee arrivals, according to a report published this month by the NGO Mercy Corps. To add to the water stress, the country is currently undergoing its driest rainy season in decades.

One proposed solution is due to be implemented by mid-2018 following Jordan’s signing of a controversial water sharing agreement with Israel and the Palestinian authorities in December 2013 after decades of discussions.

The agreement paves the way for the long-discussed Red Sea Dead Sea Water Conveyer (RSDSWC) project, though in a much reduced form. It includes the construction of a desalination plant at the Jordanian port of Aqaba, which will desalinate 800-1,000 million cubic metres (mcm) per year shared by participating countries, and the pumping of brine to revive the Dead Sea via a 180km pipeline/canal.

According to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Jordan will have chosen the contractor by April 2015, construction will begin at the end of 2015, and implementation will last almost 2.5 years. “With this, we will have solved Jordan’s problems at least for the next 30 years,” said Nabeel Zoubi, programme manager for the Red-Dead Sea programme at the ministry.

The plant is expected to produce at least 80 mcm every year, according to Zoubi. “Israel will buy approximately 50 mcm from Jordan at a cost of US$0.42 per cubic metre and the rest - approximately 30-40 mcm - will go to Jordan’s governorate of Aqaba,” Zoubi added....

Bab El Mandeb, South gate of the Red Sea, owner unknown, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The Red-Dead water conveyer can avoid a dead end

Batir Wardam in SciDev.net: After a delay of more than six months, the World Bank has finally released the final drafts of the feasibility and environmental assessment studies for the controversial Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, designed to channel some 1.2 billion cubic metres of water 180 kilometres from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

The plan is to pump sea water from the Red Sea, pass it through a series of desalination plants, use the desalinated water for drinking, and discharge the brine to the Dead Sea, which should help restore it to its 20th century levels and prevent it from vanishing like the Aral Sea. Although the studies recommend going ahead with the project they raise more questions than they answer, casting a shadow of uncertainty over its future.

The project was proposed in 2002 to save the Dead Sea from collapse, to quench the region's thirst by providing 850 million cubic metres of drinking water per year, and as an example of peaceful cooperation in the tense Middle East region.

But it has drawn polarised reactions. Critics warn that mixing the water from the Red Sea with the Dead Sea will have negative environmental consequences and use up energy that is already scarce and getting more expensive…

The Dead Sea from the Jordan coast, shot by Bernard Gagnon, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Environmental concerns reach fever pitch over plan to link Red Sea to Dead Sea

Josie Glausiusz in Nature: An ambitious plan to build a pipeline to carry water from the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea lurched forward this month, after the World Bank held hearings to gather public comments on the proposal. But environmentalists charge that alternative plans to save the Dead Sea would be cheaper, more flexible and would have less impact on the region’s ecosystems.

If the project proceeds, a 180-kilometre buried pipeline will carry up to 2 billion cubic metres (m3) of sea water per year from the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea through Jordanian territory to the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is world's lowest inland area. Proposals have been put forward to set up the pipeline so that the downward flow of the water goes through a hydroelectric plant that would in turn power a desalination plant, providing up to 850 million m3 of fresh water per year to the parched region. Brine from the desalination plant would be discharged into the already-saline Dead Sea, replenishing water that is evaporating from the lake at a rate of more than 1 metre per year.

The estimated cost of the project would be at least US$10 billion, of which about $2 billion would be for facilities that would pump the desalinated water from the Dead Sea towards Amman — a distance of 200 kilometres, and a difference in altitude of 1,000 metres....

Satellite view from NASA of the Dead Sea