AMMAN —
Jordan is looking into a seawater desalination
project as a replacement of the Red Sea-Dead Sea water conveyance project after
a decade of impasse among regional partners and the withdrawal of the main
funder, sources familiar with the plan said.
اضافة اعلان
The World Bank has 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.”
The project was also to include a desalination facility,
where the purified water would be used to meet domestic water needs, and the
remaining water with high salt concentration would be pumped into the Dead Sea.
“It was proposed to release over one billion cubic meters of
brine into the Dead Sea, to not only stabilize the Dead Sea but to raise the
sea level to earlier heights,” Ecopeace reports.
Yet, even prior to the World Bank’s decision, this project
has been on hold for nearly a decade.
“This project has not been discussed in years, it is not in
the framework,” an expert familiar with the matter told Jordan News. “For 10
years, there haven’t been any steps taken in this project; there have been many
negotiations and disagreements.”
The expert pointed to inter-governmental and political
disagreements among the entities involved as the reason the Dead Sea- Red Sea
conveyance project never took off.
“It is a political project; what stopped it is politics,”
the expert, who asked to remain unnamed, told Jordan News.
Another source involved in the project clarified that the
World Bank decision does not necessarily signify that the project is no longer
being considered within the Jordanian official circles.
Jordan is currently facing a water scarcity issue that is
only worsening with the rise in population and the reduction in rainwater
supply. Existing water sources are experiencing significant pressure, the water
sector expert explained, and the government is searching for non-traditional
sources to meet demand.
Desalination of seawater, the experts agreed, is the most
feasible solution to this issue in Jordan.
“For a few years now, the Ministry of Water has been looking
into a desalination project between Aqaba and Amman,” the source said. “This
could be seen as a replacement.”
The project, explained the source, will be located within
Jordan, and is, therefore, easier to coordinate and implement. It’s a large
scale and high-cost scheme, and it requires the involvement of an array of state
entities.
There has been significant movement in the development of
this project for the past few years, the source said. “We don’t have many options; the only
solution that can give us the quantity we need is desalination.”
Read more
National News
.jpg)
.jpg)
