Munqeth Mehyar tried not to break the speed limit as he drove his black Toyota Camry down the Al-Adassiya road from Amman to the Dead Sea. The 48-year-old Jordanian environmental activist was in a rush to get to a conference where international donors and would-be donors were meeting for the launch of a controversial feasibility study for saving the Dead Sea. Mehyar, who had not been invited, had some things he wanted to say. He only hoped no one would stop him at the door.

The remarkable Dead Sea has become the subject of a remarkable brawl between states, organizations, environmentalists and water management experts on how to save the shrinking body of water from environmental disaster. What is generally agreed is that the solution now on the table – replenishing the dying sea with water pumped from the Red Sea – will be very expensive to implement. The current estimate stands at $5 billion.

Located in one of the most spectacular places on earth, the electric blue lake lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, formed millions of years ago when the tectonic plate of Arabia tore away from the African plate. The result was a deep gash that at its deepest point is 400 meters below sea level.

Water that flows in can’t flow out, hence the Dead Sea, which is so salty it is nearly devoid of life. But the vast quantities of minerals and salts dissolved in it have turned the lake into a lucrative business for Jordanian and Israeli factories, which supply potash for fertilizer and chemicals used in industry and medicine. The northwest bank of the sea lies in the Palestinian Territories, but because it is under Israeli occupation the Palestinians have not benefited from what the lake holds.

Running on empty. The beauty of the valley, the serenity of the sea and the medicinal qualities of the water also attract hundreds of thousands of tourists who stay in luxury hotels on both the Israeli and Jordanian shores. Today, all of that is in danger: the sea is dropping by a meter a year. The main reason is that the Jordan River, which once supplied more than a billion cubic meters of water a year to the Dead Sea, now trickles out barely 100 million meters of water. Most of the water that once fed into the holy river is diverted. Israel pumps about 600 million cubic meters a year from the Upper Jordan and the Sea of Galilee into its National Carrier for drinking water and agriculture. Jordan and Syria pump an average of 400 million cubic meters of water from the Yarmuk, a tributary of the Jordan.

The result is that parts of the river sometimes run dry. When it does flow, much of what makes it to the sea is agricultural runoff and sewage from Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian towns along the valley. As it winds closer to the Dead Sea, the river gets narrower, the stench gets stronger and the water becomes murkier.

Now as the Dead Sea dries up it is endangering the lives and livelihood of the people around it. Tourism is threatened. Israeli hotels along the sea’s southern end are, paradoxically, threatened by flooding, due to the imbalance created as factories pump in water for processing. As the sea level drops, tourists on the Israeli side have

to walk longer distances to get to it, where once it was on the hotel doorstep. The seaside on the Jordanian side is steeper and as the water drops tourists have to climb further down to get to it. At this rate Jordanian hotels may before long have to install funiculars to fetch the tourists to the top.

Swallowed up. Even more worrying are the sinkholes that form suddenly when a huge chunk of earth suddenly collapses in on itself. The sinkholes, which began appearing 20 years ago, have occasionally swallowed people and livestock. Lately more and more of them have been forming as the sea level decreases, causing groundwater to flow toward the receding shoreline. The groundwater dissolves the salt deposits as it seeps forward, leaving hollows behind. The Jordanian side of the sea is dotted with farms, many of which have had to be abandoned as the earth caves in. Villagers are afraid to walk about at night on the treacherous ground.

The sinkholes have already cost businesses dearly. The Arab Potash Company, one of Jordan’s largest firms, reportedly lost about $130 million when one of its dykes collapsed overnight. In November, a sinkhole suddenly appeared next to a sewage treatment plant on the Israeli side of the sea.

“It will cost us 3.5 million shekels to relocate the plant,” said Dov Litvinoff, the mayor of the Tamar Regional Council, complaining that the government won’t pay. “The terrible thing is that no Israeli insurance company will insure anyone here against damage to life and property.”

To solve the Dead Sea predicament, the extreme water shortage that Jordan faces, and to supply the energy needs of Jordan, Israel and Palestine, Israel proposed building a shared canal, which would bring 1.7 billion cubic meters of water a year from the Red Sea across 200 kilometers to the Dead Sea. The downward slope of the canal would – it is hoped – create enough energy to operate a hydroelectric plant and what would be the world’s largest desalination plant, where 800 million cubic meters of water would be desalinated, mostly for Jordan and some to the Palestinians and Israelis. The event on December 10 marked the launching of the study to see if the estimated $5 billion project is possible.

As he approached the entrance, Mehyar was worried he would not be allowed in to the launch event. As one of the co-directors of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli environmental organization, he was probably the last person the World Bank and governments involved wanted to see – and for good reason.

Connecting the dots. The feasibility study only looks into one option for saving the Dead Sea: the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conduit, or Red-Dead as it is commonly called. FoEME and others call on the World Bank to study the alternatives. The grassroots organization has managed to raise awareness of the link between saving the Jordan River and saving the Dead Sea. In a November meeting FoEME organized in New York between five Jordan Valley Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian mayors and the vice president of the World Bank, who reportedly was angry at FoEME.

“He said that in a way Friends of Earth is wrecking the fundraising for the study because they are going to countries and telling them the project must include other alternatives,” said Litvinoff, the Israeli mayor who attended. So far, only $9 million of the $15 million budget of the study has been raised by four donors: the United States, Japan, France and the Netherlands.

When Mehyar entered the conference center, he told the donors and potential donors that the single-option study “is in breach of the World Bank’s own guidelines which call for exploring all alternatives.” So far, however, the Israeli and Jordanian governments are firmly behind the project. They see the Peace Channel, as it is called, as mutually beneficial. Best of all, the bill for the project is to be footed by foreign countries supportive of joint Arab-Israeli initiatives.

Israeli statesman Shimon Peres has lent his weight to the project since the 1990s. “This project is a joint venture between Israel and the Jordanians to the benefit of both,” said Yoram Dori, Peres’ spokesman. “The sea is drying up and the Jordanians need a lot of water. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.”

Tripartite plan. According to the plan, the canal will lie almost entirely on the Jordanian side. It will rise to Faran, where the water will then drop toward the Dead Sea, utilizing the 600-meter difference in elevation to power a hydroelectric power station and produce 800 megawatts of electricity for Palestine, Israel and Jordan and supply 850 million cubic meters of water which would be divided evenly between the three countries, said an Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructures spokesman. Although part of the Dead Sea is in Palestinian Territory, and the Red-Dead could not have gone forward without all three parties signing, a comment by one Israeli official showed the Israelis don’t accept Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank area of the Dead Sea.

“Our office has no contact with the Palestinians, only the Jordanians,” said the spokesman from the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructures, who asked not to give his name. “Why do I need to liaise with them? … The Dead Sea does not belong to them – it belongs to the Israelis and Jordanians.”

When it was pointed out to him that the northwestern part of the Dead Sea falls in the occupied Palestinian Territories, the official responded, “Depends on whom you ask … Israel has very clear borders and the Dead Sea is not inside the Palestinan area. The 1967 borders are not recognized by the state of Israel.” When asked why Palestinian participation was necessary for the study to take place he said, “Ask the World Bank.”

Better Dead than Red. Critics say the Red-Dead is not cost efficient. Dan Zaslavsky thinks the plan should fall into a sinkhole. Unlike FoEME and the mayors, he does not mince his words. “It’s the stupidest, most asinine plan imaginable,” said Zaslavsky, the chairman of the Israeli National Commission for Research and Development, the independent body that advises the government in R&D.

The Red-Dead idea is an offshoot of the “Med-Dead” proposal that was shelved in 1985. The idea was to generate more electricity for Israel for less money by bringing water from the Mediterranean Sea by a canal to the Dead Sea. The length of the canal would have been 70 kilometers and the drop to the Dead Sea would have created the electricity. But a study proved that it was not cost efficient.

After the peace agreement with Jordan in the 1990s, which requires that Israel give Jordan a certain amount of water, the Med-Dead was resurrected in the form of the Red-Dead, which would also create desalinated water for the Hashemite Kingdom. Two US companies, Harza and Bechtel, studied the plan. Their reports, said Zaslavsky, showed that it would be even less cost-efficient than Med-Dead.

“Instead of making it 70 kilometers, it’s 200 kilometers,” said Zaslavsky, his voice rising in frustration. “And if that weren’t enough, instead of doing it for creating electricity they changed it to desalinating water. So of course the price doubled and the income reduced to about one-fifth.”

Critics fear that the canal, which will be made up of five pipelines, will be an environmental disaster. “Since all pipes leak, the salty Red Sea water will seep into the aquifer and contaminate drinking water,” said Mira Edelstein, a member of the FoEME Israeli team.

Combustible mix. Mixing the waters of the two seas could have disastrous results, not least because of the unpredictability of introducting life forms that are alien to the Dead Sea, and the possibility of chemical reactions that could produce noxious gases. The sea could lose its blue color and turn white or even red, reflecting changes that make further chemical extraction impossible. “It will kill the Dead Sea industries,” said Zaslavsky, who is also a professor of water engineering at the renowned Technion in Haifa. The proposed two-year World Bank feasibility study promises to also research the environmental impact of the canal.

Another problem, note experts, is that the cost of raising the water from 400 meters below sea level to Amman will be enormous. Some suggest Amman solve its water problem by importing water from Europe or Turkey.

But the most attractive alternative would be for Israel to open a desalination plant on its coast and transfer part of that water across to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority through already existing pipelines. Israel would not then have to divert so much from the Sea of Galilee, they say, but could allow 350-400 million cubic meters of water to flow to the Dead Sea.

In addition, water treatment plants could be built along the Jordan so farmers use treated water, not fresh water. They could also change the crops under cultivation to kinds or strains that are less demanding of water. Zaslavsky said desalinated Mediterranean Sea water would cost $.53 per cubic meter while desalinated water from the Red-Dead canal will cost $1.50.

“Everybody can say whatever he wants,” said Zafer Alem, Jordan’s Minister for Water and Irrigation, his voice rising in irritation in a phone interview. “But if it comes to numbers and figures, the Dead Sea needs 1.9 billion cubic meters annually. You can’t get that from the Jordan River.” But the Red-Dead canal plan is to leave only about 900 million cubic meters in the sea.

Chicken or egg. Zaslavsky said it is pointless to try to return the Dead Sea to its former size: “It’s like trying to turn a fried egg into a chick.” But, he said, the Jordan alone could replenish the Dead Sea if its waters were allowed to drain into it without being diverted. He slammed the World Bank, and the Israeli and Jordanian ministers for their apparent unwillingness to consider any alternative to their plan.

“The fact that this plan still exists is due to the fact that there are two types of characters involved with it,” said Zaslavsky. “One doesn’t know what he’s talking about and the other knows but doesn’t say the truth because he will lose his job.”

Alem called on critics to be patient. “We are doing a feasibility study which studies the environmental, economic and technical aspects. If it shows we are wrong, do you think we’ll continue? Let us start the study.”

Saving the Jordan would not only save the Dead Sea, without harmful effects, it could also boost tourism, say FoEME and Jordan Valley residents. They envision turning the region – known in Arabic as the Ghor – into a tourist destination with historical, religious and nature attractions. Despite their differing political views, many Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian mayors support the idea.

“We have the language of peace in common,” said Ma’moun Al-Alawneh, the mayor of Pella in Jordan. “All the sides, Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian, agree on the need to save the river.” The 50-year-old knows of the beauty of the river from his father who told him how it once attracted fish and birds. “But now the fish die and the birds don’t come because of the pollution,” he said. “My father also told me that he would cross the river in a boat and go to Haifa to bring back oranges. Now you can walk across the river.”

Yael Shaltieli, the Israeli director general of minerals, agriculture and rural development, believes local tourism would sow peace among the Palestinians, Jordanians and Israelis living there. “The river is now dead,” said Shaltieli. “Our vision is to make it alive and change it from a barrier to a bridge.”

At the World Bank pow-wow Mehyar said he hoped he got his point across to donors. “What could be a more obvious solution to save the Dead Sea than to save the river that always filled it?”

The World Bank did not return calls from TRENDS concerning the study. n