AMMAN —
The Ministry of Water and Irrigation is developing the
Aqaba–Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project (AAWDC) to address
domestic water shortage in the Kingdom by constructing a desalination facility
to draw water from the Gulf of
Aqaba, produce drinking water and deliver it to
the governates.
اضافة اعلان
“Next week we will start assessing the 13 companies that showed
interest in the project and we will qualify the most suitable ones by the end
of this month or the beginning of next month,” said Minister of Water and
Irrigation, Mohammad Najjar in a TV interview on Tuesday.
“We will give them time to study the project and present financial
and technical proposals; we hope that between 2025 and 2026, this project will
be completed.” An environmental impact assessment is also underway, expected to
be concluded in late July, he added.
The project aims to generate 250-300 mcm of desalinated water a
year to be pumped to governates across the Kingdom. Currently, demand for water
exceeds supply by 400-500 mcm a year, according to Ministry of Water report,
and this is expected to worsen with population growth and resource depletion.
Experts agree that the nation is in need of a sustainable solution.
“We exhausted all the water resources, and our supplies are not sustainable,”
AAWDC project manager at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation Issa Al-Wer told Jordan News. “The only solution to bring water from a non-depletable
source that is always there: the Red Sea.”
The project is expected to address domestic shortages, provide
additional water for irrigation from increased resultant treated wastewater and
stimulate economic development in the regions involved and along the conveyor
corridor.
“This would be under our sovereignty, under our control – it is our
water,” said Al-Wer, “At this scale, a project like this has never been done
before in Jordan.”
Among the greatest challenges to implementing this project is the
long-distance between the Red Sea and the areas with high water demand in
addition to differences in elevation, explained Al-Wer. This all represents an
added cost.
“The cost of the project is roughly two billion; but we will know
more once we get the offers,” said Al-Wer. The financing model includes government
contribution, grants from global institutions in addition to soft loans for
developers.
A variety of donors and members of the international community are
expressing interest in supporting the project, he explained. For example, USAID
has offered grants for technical studies and to subsidize parts of the project,
the European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency have proposed financial
support as well.
The ministry is additionally working with local entities including
the Ministry of Energy to address some project needs. “The desalination
technology and conveyance require a lot of power; roughly 60-70 percent of the
water cost will be energy, so any reduction will be reflected on the financial
sustainability and affordability of the project,” explained Al-Wer.
Another project that was previously proposed as a potential
sustainable water solution, is the Red to Dead Water conveyance project. While the goal of addressing shortages is the
same, the process and the entities involved, differ.
Per Najjar’s statements, the previous project did not satisfy the
nation’s immediate water requirements. “We have urgent needs and there are no
agreements made regarding the Red-Dead project,” he explained. “We are now
moving forward with the National Carrier project; it is our water on our land.”
The World Bank has recently
announced that the project has been removed from their list of approved
projects, citing the lack of inter-governmental agreement on project standards,
which was supposed to involve Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
This two-decade-old plan involved the extension
of a water pipeline between the Red Sea to the Dead Sea in Jordan. According to
Ecopeace, the idea was born in 2002 at the World Summit for Sustainable Development
held in Johannesburg, South Africa, when the governments of Jordan, Israel and
the Palestinian Authority advanced the idea of building a water conveyance
linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.
While the water provided will help meet the immediate population
needs, Al-Wer predicts that looking ahead, we would need a new station or
additional pipeline to meet the rising water demand.
“By 2040 we would need another facility as big as this, because of
population growth and resource depletion,” explained Al-Wer. “But we imagine
that this is the first step in desalination solutions; after this we would have
standards, experience, understand the technology more and we can run these
projects.”
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