The Issue

I. Identification
1. The Issue: The Dead Sea is drying up, with severe negative consequences on the ecosystem, industry and wildlife in the area. There have been several proposals for a canal to transport Mediterranean Sea or Red Sea water to the Dead Sea. Such a water project would reverse the negative impacts on the environment; that is, the erosion of the shoreline and disruption of the water column caused by declining water levels. The canal would reverse negative impacts on trade by revitalizing the potash works industry and tourism on the Israeli and Jordanian sides. The canal would also create new trade and development opportunities by using the 400-meter differential between the bodies of water to generate hydropower -- a much needed source of water for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes. Although the benefits of such a project are clear, there are drawbacks, including cost. Additional cost-benefit analyses of a Dead Sea canal are necessary.
2. Description:
A million years ago, a major earthquake created the Syrian-African Rift. The Dead Sea sank deep into the valley and was deprived of its natural outflow to the sea. Today, the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth at 400 feet below sea level. Fresh water flowing downstream through the Jordan River empties into the terminal lake. Having no exit point, the Dead Sea water evaporates, causing salts to accumulate in the lake and in its sediments. As a result, the Dead Sea's salt concentration is about 33 percent, compared to 3 percent in the Mediterranean. In the 1930s, the inflow of freshwater equaled the rate of evaporation, with the Jordan River emptying some 1,300 cubic millimeters/year -- two thirds of the total inflow -- into the Dead Sea. Today, inflow is only 400 cubic millimeters per year due to national water projects on both sides of the Jordan that have diverted fresh water upstream. As the rate of inflow from the Jordan has decreased, so has the level of the Dead Sea. The lake's high rate of evaporation has also contributed to declining levels.
The Dead Sea originally consisted of two basins -- a larger, deep northern basin and a shallow southern one -- separated by a peninsula called El Lisan ("the tongue" in Arabic). The size difference is so drastic that the earliest map of the Dead Sea -- a mosaic from 560 C.E. -- shows only the northern basin. Actual measurements, recorded since the 1920s, show that the basins reached maximum levels of 330 meters in the north and 6 meters in the south. As of 1975, water from the northern basin continued to cross the Lisan Straits into the shallow southern basin. Today, the southern basin is essentially dry, except for evaporation ponds used for Israeli and Jordanian potash plants.
The idea of connecting the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean goes back to the 19th century, when a engineers suggested the possibility of using the natural elevation difference between the two seas to produce hydroelectric energy. According to this scheme, turbines would convert water into mechanical energy, which would be used to produce electricity. Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, formalized the idea of a hydropower canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea in his 1902 novel Altneuland. He wrote that it would be possible to take advantage of the 400-meter drop to generate hydroelectric power. In the 1950s, the American conservationist Walter C. Lowdermilk, conducted research on a canal stretching from the Mediterranean, across the Negev Desert, to the Dead Sea. He calculated that the 400-meter drop would generate 100 megawatts of electric power. Scientists have revisited the idea of a hydroelectric scheme that would produce water without flooding tourist and industrial sites along the shores.
In 1977, an Israeli planning group considered four possible routes for a canal: one from the Gulf of Aqaba in the south and three from the Mediterranean (the northernmost being the one envisioned by Lowdermilk). The group favored the southern-most Mediterranean route, which would avoid the country's major aquifers and could promote development in the northern Negev. The project would refill the lake to the level of the 1930s over a period of 10 to 20 years. After 20 years, when the Dead Sea reached its historic levels and the inflow matched the evaporation rate, the flow of the canal would be reduced. In addition to restoring the level of the lake, the canal would generate electricity. The group determined that an inflow of 1.6 cubic kilometers of water per year would generate up to 800 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Storage reservoirs would be built so that the generation of electricity could be regulated to meet demand.
The Jordanians proposed a similar canal, with the source of water originating from the Red Sea instead of the Mediterranean. According to the plan, water would be pumped from the Red Sea at Jordan's southernmost town of Aqaba to an elevation of 220 meters. From there, it would flow via tunnel through the Jordan Rift Valley mountains for 200 kilometers before dropping into the Dead Sea.
The Israeli- and Jordanian-proposed Dead Sea hydro projects focused on power generation rather than water generation. A new study -- started in the early 1980s and completed in September 1996 by Harza Engineering of Chicago -- suggested that a Red-Dead Canal could generate fresh water that could be used to supplement scarce water resources in the region. Harza determined that water pumped up 410 feet from the Red Sea would plunge some 1,750 vertical feet through the Jordan Rift Valley to the Dead Sea. The drop would generate hydropower which, augmented by solar power, would fuel desalination and make available fresh water for agriculture, fish ponds, industry and recreation on artificial lakes. The 400-meter drop could also be used for reverse osmosis desalination. This process uses the force of the drop to push sea water through an artificial membrane, creating even more fresh water. Given that 70 percent of all water resources in Israel, Jordan and Palestinian areas is devoted to agriculture, this new supply of water would allow farmers to continue producing some water-absorbing crops (fruit) for export, instead of completely shifting to non-water intensive crops. Thus, the primary objective of the Harza project is to create a sustainable source of potable water to complement existing conservation practices. Secondary objectives include power production and reversal of the Dead Sea's dropping table.