Excerpt:
"In its desperate efforts to battle chronic water shortages, Jordan, one of the world's 10 driest countries, is mulling "unconventional" and "environmentally unfriendly" plans, experts say. The challenge is huge for this tiny country where desert covers 92 percent of the territory and the population of 6.3 million is growing.
Critics say the government's efforts to manage the country's limited water resources and generate new ones are being hindered by a strategy which at best is chaotic. Jordan is tapping into the ancient southern Disi aquifer, despite concerns about high levels of radiation, while studies are underway to build a controversial canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. "Unconventional projects, like Disi for example, are environmentally unfriendly," water expert Dureid Mahasneh, a former Jordan Valley Authority chief, told AFP. The 990-million-dollar project seeks to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer, 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman, officials say. The plan is to provide the capital Amman with water for 50 years, said water ministry official Bassam Saleh, who is in charge of the project that was launched in 2008 and is due to be completed in 2012.
A 2008 study by Duke University, in the United States, shows that Disi's water has 20times more radiation than is considered safe, with radium content that could trigger cancers. "Our research shows that the Disi aquifer is heavily contaminated with radium," according to the study done by the Durham, North Carolina team which tested 37 pumping wells in the aquifer. Mahasneh said "Disi water should not be touched." "How can you go for a non-renewable water resource that is contaminated with radiation and needs treatment?" But the government has brushed aside such concerns. "We know there is radiation in Disi because it is underground water but we will treat it by diluting it with an equal amount of water from other sources," said Saleh. Jordan University professor Elias Salameh agreed. "The radioactivity can be treated, and it is not a complicated matter."
Munqeth Mehyar, of the Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), warned against abusing the water resource. "If we overpump the Disi water, we will suffer from problems like sinkholes for example. And there are no studies that tell you for sure how long the aquifer water would last," he said. Jordan has also agreed in principle to build, along with its Palestinian and Israeli neighbours, a four-billion-dollar pipeline from the Red Sea to refill the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea. But the world's lowest and saltiest body of water lies below the Red Sea and the pipeline must cross higher land in order to reach it -- a project that will entail a major pumping effort. A desalination plant would also be built to remove the salt and provide 200 million cubic metres of potable water to Jordan each year.
"This project is worrisome. It will cause indescribable damage," Mehyar warned. A feasibility study is being carried out by the World Bank but environmentalists fear that an influx of seawater could undermine the Dead Sea's fragile ecosystem. The degradation of the Dead Sea began in the 1960s when Israel, Jordan and Syria began to divert water from the Jordan River -- the Dead Sea's main supplier. Over the years 95 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by the three neighbours for agricultural and industrial use, with Israel alone diverts more than 60 percent of it, according to FoEME. The impact on the Dead Sea has been compounded by a drop in groundwater levels as rain water from surrounding mountains dissolved salt deposits that had previously plugged access to underground caverns. Industrial and tourist operations around the shores of the lake exacerbate the situation.
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This is where you see the extent of water scarcity when every option open to you is at a chokepoint. Mismanagement, agricultural waste, human waste, overpopulation, biodistress. All made by humans. This is about us and our will to truly want to change this situation globally.
And it is now a hard choice for Jordan with radiation, polluted waterways and a project that may well cause more environmental harm than good. This is the price we will pay for human arrogance, and in this case there is no definitive solution that will truly benefit the people as a whole. It is truly sad.
Ancient Petra Meets Modern Amman In Water Battle
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