Last update - 00:00 12/08/2007
Public hearing to address Dead Sea-Red Sea canal project
By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent
The World Bank and the Israeli government are sponsoring a meeting Sunday that will discuss the future of the Dead Sea. The meeting, which will be held at the Shalom Plaza Neveh Ilan Hotel outside Jerusalem, is open to the public.
World Bank representatives and Israel Water Commissioner Dr. Uri Shani will present the intended viability studies for building a canal from Gulf of Eilat to the Dead Sea.
The bank has already held public hearings on the matter in Amman, Ramallah and Jericho.
Advocacy groups like Friends of the Earth Middle East, which includes Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians, along with representatives of communities in the Dead Sea region, are worried about the environmental impact of a Dead Sea-Red Sea canal. They are highly critical of the manner in which the plan was formulated, and intend to voice their complaints loud and clear today.
The Israeli government official in charge of the project, Erez Ron, gave a progress report last week to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. He said that the canal is part of the Economic Peace Corridor Project involving cooperation with Jordan and the Palestinians. The canal would cross Jordanian territory, partly through an underground tunnel, and would carry from 1.5 billion to 2 billion cubic meters of sea water annually. A desalination plant would be built near the Dead Sea to provide water to the Jordanian capital. The resulting saline concentrate, a total of 1.2 billion cubic meters per year, would be pumped into the Dead Sea to help raise its receding level.
The project, which must first be determined to be financially viable, is scheduled to be completed by 2020.
Ron said that the project's viability will be examined by Israel at the same time as the World Bank conducts studies. Funding for the project will come mostly from private entities, and Ron believes that it would be financially viable by creating artificial lakes on the Jordanian side of the Arava desert, adjacent to the canal, as tourist sites for envisioned hotel resorts.
Environmentalists are concerned that such tourism would severely damage the Arava, and that the canal might generate dangerous changes in the makeup of the Dead Sea water, including reddening its color as a result of algae growth and bacteria. It might also harm the Gulf of Eilat because of extensive pumping activity, and could be vulnerable to risks such as water leaks and earthquake damage.