Discovery News published an article by Jamal Halaby of the Associated Press on May 7th that discusses the not-so-slow but steady death of the Dead Sea (accidental pun).

Here are the highlights of the article:

1- Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians are slowly pushing through the tangle of their disputes and suspicions in a race to save a biblical and ecological treasure, the Dead Sea.

The famously salty sea, which lies at Earth’s lowest point, is shrinking. It has receded by some three feet a year for the past 25 years, and Jordan and Israel warn that if the trend continues, it will vanish by 2050 along with its unique ecosystem, defeated by river diversions, mineral extraction and natural reasons, like evaporation.

2- The urgency is made clear by a dramatic side effect of the dwindling water: sinkholes.

These yawns open in a flash, leaving pits 100 feet deep or more in the sponge-like terrain. At Ghor Haditha, a Jordanian village of 6,000 people on the Dead Sea’s southern tip, signs warn of the peril and huge holes dot the vegetable fields.

The sinkholes happen because underground aquifers shrink and salt left by the receding Dead Sea waters erodes the earth.

3- The Dead Sea, or Salt Sea, is mentioned in the Old Testament. The sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are said to have stood on its banks, and from nearby Mount Nebo, Moses reputedly first saw the Promised Land.

The placid, sun-baked lake, surrounded by spectacular desert cliffs, has also become a tourist attraction for both Jordan and Israel, due to its curative waters and black mud. Five-star hotels are sprouting on its shores, creating pollution problems which pose a further threat.

4- One plan, to draw water from the Mediterranean, about 50 miles to the west, was shelved as too costly, so “Med-Dead” shifted to “Red-Dead” - an underground pipeline bringing water from the Red Sea, 125 miles south.

The feasibility study finally began this year, with 60 percent of its $15.5 million cost provided by the United States and other Western donors. The pipeline itself will cost $1 billion and take two years to complete, if funding can be found.

5- But the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and subsequent violence put the brakes on the project.

The sides agreed in late 2005 to launch a feasibility study for the pipeline, but Israel balked following the landslide January 2006 election victory of the militant Hamas group and its eventual takeover of the Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

With renewed Jordanian prodding to resurrect the project, a compromise was reached to include Palestinian moderates on a committee overseeing the project.

The whole article “Dead Sea Rescue Slowed by Conflicts” is here.

I once cut my foot by mistake and forgot all about it until minutes later when I dipped it in the Dead Sea. That is something that happened years ago and the burning feeling I felt was unforgettable. Last year, however, I visited the Dead Sea and I seriously felt that the waters were not as salty as before. Not a single place in my cut-ridden body burned, I felt nothing. That was a very alarming sign, and it was very personal.

As a Jordanian citizen, I grew up taking pride in knowing that we have the lowest point on earth, the saltiest body of water, and a famous biblical site that is also making money for cosmetics and tourism tycoons. Whenever my family and I passed by the Dead Sea, I would look at it and feel connected to nature. My father would always tell us stories on Sodom and Gomorrah and their swift destruction. The Dead Sea, its beauty and its tales, became part of our family tradition.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Jordanians feel strongly connected to the Dead Sea. True, it is not exactly big and it is not exactly enjoyable if you have cuts on your body. Truer still, drinking some of its water would cause you to throw up and if that water gets in your eyes then you will be very sorry. But still, it is our sea and our wonder.

The Dead Sea has visibly and rapidly shrunk over the years. Anyone who has been to it during the 1990’s and again in 2007 would notice the matter-of-fact decline in its size and saltiness. Simply put, Jordan and Israel are destroying the Dead Sea and with the little coordination that seems to be taking place every once in a while, things are not looking up.

If the revival of the Dead Sea is too costly for governments, why don’t the private corporations that own the multiple hotels and spas along its shores chip in? Why don’t the people behind successful Dead Sea products assume some of the responsibility, too? Also, the companies that extract salt from the waters (thereby greatly accelerating evaporation), shouldn’t they allocate some funds to help keep the ball rollin’? Isn’t environmental responsibility quite trendy these days? You would think that the same corporations that generate profit from the Dead Sea would want to keep that flow of cash coming in, no?

Still on the issue of revival, politics should not be allowed to interfere in this one… more… thing. The people in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine are clearly already burdened with the political conflicts in their daily lives. But to let that conflict steal away something that they all share is simply unspeakable. It would be true transgression on every citizen’s environmental rights in all three of these countries.

In the meantime, the three culprits governments are deliberating, fighting, and sometimes negotiating a way out of the mess that they let happen. Maybe they are waiting for Green Peace to settle the dispute. Or maybe they want a Rabbi and a Sheikh to agree on the location of Sodom so they would know which side will pay more funds…and by then the Dead Sea would have become a trickle of water on a pillar of salt.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Jordan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.