The building of a pipeline that will supply Jordan’s capital with much needed water gets under way. The construction of a pipeline that will carry 3.5 billion cubic feet of water to the Jordanian capital Amman has commenced after years of water shortage.

Following a deal between Jordan and Turkey, the Disi Water Conveyance Project will tap water from the Disi aquifer, an underground reserve, located on the border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

“The country is in deficit in terms of water availability,” Munqeth Mehyar, chairperson and Jordan director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth-Middle East, told The Media Line. “Since we don’t have too many options in Jordan, they found out that water from the Disi would be a logical [source].”

“It will take a really long time to work on a water reform [program] between agriculture and the infrastructure in Amman and other major cities,” Mehyar said. “Between now and then the population will continue to grow so it’s only logical for the government to look for other resources.”

Planners of the pipeline are estimating that even after water from the Disi aquifer has been depleted, the channel will still serve to carry desalinated water from the Gulf of Aqaba in southern Jordan to the rest of the country.

Turkey and two European investment agencies have provided an estimated $1 billion of funding for the 210 mile pipeline. Construction will be undertaken by the Turkish firm GAMA and the British Halcrow.

“Worth approximately £5 million to the company, the scheme will involve project management, design review and site auditing for Jordan-based concessionaire Disi Water Company,” a Halcrow statement read.

Jordan is considered one of the ten most water-scarce countries in the world and domestic water usage is often restricted. Completion of the Disi pipeline is scheduled for 2013 and is due to cover about 30% of Amman’s water needs.

Construction of the pumping stations for the pipeline started in June 2009 and is nearing completion.

Mehyar stressed that the Disi project is not competing with the so called Red-Dead Canal, between the Red Sea and Dead Sea and designed to tackle the drying up of the Dead Sea.

“Its two different projects, the Disi project is Jordanian,” Mehyar said. “Jordan has been thinking about securing this project since 1989.”

“The Red-Dead canal is a totally different idea with totally different objectives,” he said referring both to saving the Dead Sea and plans to generate electricity from the canal’s water flow.

The natural source of the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, is depleting as both Israel and Jordan are diverting its water.

(By Adam Gonn for The Media Line, the Mideast News Source. Reprinted with permission.)

More on water from the Jordan-Israel region:
Activists Urge Pope to Help Them Clean Up the Jordan
The Jordan River Peace Park
Israel to Compensate Jordan for Polluted Water

[image via mamchenkov]

The post Jordanian Water Pipeline Construction Starts appeared first on Green Prophet.

This video segment from Al-Arabiya offers a Jordanian view on the water story, or “war” as they report, between Jordan and Israel.

The post Video on Israel-Jordan Water War On Jordan TV appeared first on Green Prophet.

There are few environmental topics in the Middle East more controversial than the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal to revive the Dead Sea, which has the potential to cause lasting damage to the composition of the sea’s ecosystem.

The multinational organization Friends of the Earth Middle East (FEME), who are working to build a peace park to restore the Jordan River, have an effective rejoinder to counter the Canal proposal.

With the use of water conservation and rainwater harvesting on the part of communities in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan, FEME seeks to restore the Jordan River–and thereby restore the main water source of the Dead Sea.

According to Gidon Bromberg, Israel’s Director of FEME, restoring the Jordan River may be the first step to achieving Middle East peace.

In an article for the new green blog Yale Environment 360, Bromberg writes,

Our group has made progress because we are a grassroots, multi-national effort with Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian staff members working inside their own communities while simultaneously reaching out to nationalities across the river. One of our core beliefs is that the region will never achieve a lasting peace until we begin talking directly to each other. Tackling a crucial environmental challenge that affects us all is a good start.

Bromberg chronicles the efforts of FEME to unite Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli adults and youth in the mutual purpose of saving the Jordan River. Adding to the efforts have been the support of religious organizations, who recognize the import of the river to Biblical tradition. So far, the efforts are paying off.

But the next step will be much harder: To enlist the aid of the Israeli, Jordanian and Syrian governments.

::Yale Environment 360

Green Prophet has featured the Middle East water crisis in several articles:

Will Climate Change Reduce or Increase Middle East Rainfall?

Can Israel and the Palestinians Resolve Water Politics in California?

It’s Possible To Harvest More Crop Per Drop, Find Israeli Cleantech Researchers

The post Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians Collaborate to Save the Jordan River appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Jordan Valley is an area with a rich natural, historical and cultural heritage, however, “excessive diversion and pollution of the Jordan River have left it little more than a sewage channel,” says Gidon Bromberg from FoEME, who believes that “as long as the public is denied access to the river bank, the river will continue to be polluted and local residents will be denied the opportunity to develop the area for tourism.”

The Peace Park would span both sides of the River so Mayors, municipal representatives and community members in both Jordan (Muaz Bin Jabal) and Israel (Jordan Valley and Beit Shean) have been working together with FoEME to kick-start the initiative.

The project is being dubbed the ‘King Abdullah I – Rotenberg Peace Park’, after Pinchas Rutenberg, a Russian immigrant and founder of the Palestine Electric Company (PEC), who, in 1927, reached a unique agreement with HM King Abdullah I of Jordan to build the company’s main hydroelectric power station.

Dams and canals were built to harness the flow of the water at the junction between the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers, creating a man-made island – the intended site of the Peace Park.

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