Dead Sea At Environmental Risk

by Danielle Knight

Located on the Israeli-Jordanian border about 400 meters below sea level, the salty Dead Sea has sunk by six meters during the past decade, according to findings published in the current issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

The drop followed a fall in the water table surrounding the Dead Sea, said the study, "The Lowest Place on Earth is Subsiding." Researchers said they suspected that when the water table dropped, the soil that held the water collapsed and settled behind it.

Scientists based their conclusions on data from radar satellites that examined changes in ground level along the shores of the Dead Sea.

The study suggested the subsidence could be related to gigantic sinkholes that have begun to appear along the shores of the Dead Sea.

"Since the early 1990s, sinkholes and wide subsidence features have become major problems along the Dead Sea shores in Israel and Jordan," said the study.

Since the 1950s, researchers have noted that Dead Sea water levels have dropped more than 25 meters. Water from the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers that would normally flow into the Dead Sea has been increasingly diverted for agricultural and industrial use.

Little if any of the Jordan River's water reach the Dead Sea, according to Gidon Bromberg, co-director of Friends of the Earth-Middle East, a Israel-based environmental group.

He said evaporation ponds used to produce industrial potash at the southern end of the Jordan River basin are also drying up the Dead Sea, having a detrimental impact on the surrounding plants and wildlife. The region surrounding the salty lake is home to several rare species of plant and wildlife, including the Nubian ibex, the Dead Sea sparrow, the Egyptian mongoose, and the Rueppell's fox.

"What we need is a general understanding among the Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians to come up with a sustainable environmental plan," he said.

The Jordan River basin has been plagued by heated conflicts over water use. Israel and Syria sporadically exchanged fire between March 1965 and July 1966 because of disputes over the resource, said Sandra Postel, director of the U.S.-based Global Water Policy Project and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute.

Violence broke out in the mid-1960s over plan seen as "all-Arab" by Israel to divert the river's headwaters, said Postel, who co- wrote a recent Foreign Policy magazine article on water and conflict. This plan, however, was a preemptive move to thwart Israel's intention to siphon water from the Sea of Galilee, she explained.

"Water-related tensions in the basin persisted for decades and only recently have begun to dissipate," said Postel.

Recent efforts by Israel and Jordan to coordinate use of the Jordan River have not appealed to environmentalists. Both nations have been pushing the development of the Jordan Industrial Gateway Project that would involve two planned industrial complexes that would straddle the river that separates the two countries.

Located 70 kilometers northwest from Amman, the project on the Jordanian side would include a $35 million, 50-hectare industrial complex that would expand to 127 hectares.

The project "must be stopped, for if it is not, then our Jordan River will have crossed the line from being a pristine rural area into a disaster for one of the regions last remaining open spaces," said a statement by advocacy groups, including the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan, the Palestinian Hydrology Group, the Israel Union for Environmental Defence and the Jordan Society for Sustainable Development.

Besides industrial expansion, Friends of the Earth's Bromberg said proposals for tourism projects also threaten the Dead Sea. Renowned worldwide for its health-giving properties, the Dead Sea has been a major tourist draw. Bromberg said about 50,000 new hotel rooms are planned for the region.

"This is far too much for the Sea's carrying capacity," he said.

In the last few years, environmentalists have been trying to draw international attention to the declining state of the Dead Sea. Their ultimate goal is to have the Dead Sea recognized as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

With such official recognition, Bromberg said he hoped that Israel, Jordan, and Syria would begin to "work in a cooperative manner to ensure the future survival of this world treasure."