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From: barry levine
Date: Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 9:08 AM
Subject: re: A Rare Middle East Agreement, on Water
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
From: barry levine
Date: Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 9:08 AM
Subject: re: A Rare Middle East Agreement, on Water
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Published: December 9, 2013
Dumping brine from a desalination plant at Aqaba into the Dead Sea, presents 400meters of hydraulic head. It would be scandalous not to capture that power. Of course, it could be used for hydro-electric to partially defray the energy spend in the desalination at Aqaba. But it makes more sense to use it to do the desalinization itself by reverse-osmosis. Without any expenditure of imported fossil fuel, Israel and Jordan and Palestine could get potable water from such a "Red/Dead" canal. And the same brine would replenish the Dead Sea's falling level.
The new accord should be welcomed for showing that Israelis and Palestinians and Jordanians can work together on this crucial matter. But the solution proposed is a shadow of what could be achieved there.
Barry Haskell Levine
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-jordan-and-palestinians-sign-water-project-deal.html
A Rare Middle East Agreement, on Water
Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
Coral reefs in the Red Sea. Its salt water would be converted to fresh for use in the region.
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: December 9, 2013
JERUSALEM — In a rare display of regional cooperation, representatives of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement on Monday to build a Red Sea-Dead Sea water project that is meant to benefit all three parties.
The project addresses two problems: the acute shortage of clean fresh water in the region, especially in Jordan, and the rapid contraction of the Dead Sea. A new desalination plant is to be built in Aqaba, Jordan, to convert salt water from the Red Sea into fresh water for use in southern Israel and southern Jordan — each would get eight billion to 13 billion gallons a year. The process produces about the same amount of brine as a waste product; the brine would be piped more than 100 miles to help replenish the already very saline Dead Sea.
Under the agreement, Israel will also provide Amman, the Jordanian capital, with eight billion to 13 billion gallons of fresh water from the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, and the Palestinians expect to be able to buy up to eight billion gallons of additional fresh water from Israel at preferential prices.
The agreement was signed at the Washington headquarters of the World Bank, a sponsor of the project.
The water level in the Dead Sea, an ancient salt lake whose shores are the lowest dry places on the earth’s surface, has been dropping by more than three feet a year, mainly because most of the water in the Jordan River, its main feeder, has been diverted by Israel, Jordan or Syria for domestic use and irrigation; very little now reaches the lake. Potash industries on either side of the lake have also had a detrimental impact. About 25 miles of the Dead Sea’s shoreline lie in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and are claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future state.
Israeli officials said that proposals would soon be solicited internationally from private companies to build and operate a desalination plant in Aqaba, which is meant to operate on a commercial basis, selling the potable water to Jordan and Israel. A brine pipeline to the Dead Sea, estimated to cost at least $240 million, would be financed by donor countries and organizations, with the World Bank providing a bridge loan.
The brine pipeline will run through Jordanian territory, because the planning process in Jordan is quicker and less liable to be slowed by the objections of environmentalists and other opponents, according to Israeli officials. They said that the added brine’s effects on the Dead Sea would be carefully monitored.
The project has been discussed and studied in various forms for 20 years. Speaking on Israeli Army Radio on Monday, Silvan Shalom, the Israeli cabinet minister responsible for water projects and for regional cooperation, called the agreement “historic.” But critics said it was far less ambitious than an earlier proposal for a canal that would also exploit the altitude difference between the Red and Dead Seas to generate hydroelectricity.
Regional tensions also manifested themselves. Shaddad Attili, the head of the Palestinian Water Authority, said the agreement was essentially one between Israel and Jordan, with the Palestinian Authority involved because it shares part of the Dead Sea coastline. “We gave our support to Jordan,” he said.
Speaking by telephone from the United States before the signing ceremony, Mr. Attili said the brine from the plant would have to be taken north to the Dead Sea because draining it back into the Red Sea would upset Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Mr. Attili signed the agreement in Washington on behalf of the authority; Mr. Shalom signed for Israel; and Hazim el-Naser, the Jordanian minister for water and irrigation, signed for Jordan.
Yaakov Garb, an Israeli environmental and social studies expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said that he suspected that the project was mainly motivated by a geopolitical desire to support Jordan, but that it was “wrapped up in ‘Saving the Dead Sea’ clothing” in order to attract international financing. He said it was often difficult to discern the true forces behind such major projects.
Friends of the Earth Middle East, a regional organization, expressed concern over the environmental impact of releasing brine into the Dead Sea. The organization’s Jordanian director, Munqeth Mehyar, said in a statement, “What is being signed today is a conventional desalination project, albeit with a regional perspective.”
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, but their relationship has generally remained low profile. Israel and the Palestinians are currently engaged in a round of peace talks, but they are taking place in an atmosphere of rancor and mutual recrimination.
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