Dead Sea Projected To Fall Over 400 Feet As Inflow Disappears - WP

[hatrack]

EDIT

It may sound redundant, but the Dead Sea, one of the world's cultural and ecological treasures, is dying. In the last 50 years, the water level has dropped more than 80 feet and the sea has shrunk by more than a third, largely because the Jordan River has gone dry. In the next two decades, the sea is expected to fall at least 60 more feet, and experts say nothing will stop it.

The decline has been particularly rapid since the 1970s, when the water began dropping three feet a year. That created a complex domino effect that is slowly destroying some of Israel's most cherished plant and wildlife reserves along the Dead Sea's shores, a key resting stop along the annual migration route for 500 million birds that fly between Europe and Africa. The receding waters have left huge mud flats with hundreds of sinkholes that threaten to collapse roads and buildings and have forced a development freeze on Israel's side of the sea, which lies on the border with Jordan.

"I'm looking at the reality, and nothing will change in the next 20 to 40 years -- the sinkholes will continue opening even more, the infrastructure will be destroyed from stream erosion, the water level will drop and affect the ecosystem," said Galit Cohen, head of environmental policy at Israel's Environmental Ministry. "The forecast for the future is very bad."

The main problem, experts agree, is that most of the water that once flowed into the sea -- the saltiest large body of water in the world and, at 1,371 feet below sea level, the lowest point on Earth -- is being diverted for drinking water and agriculture, so there is not enough to offset the high evaporation rate. In addition, Israeli and Jordanian industries on the south end of the sea are letting 180 million gallons of the mineral-rich water evaporate every day -- about 66 billion gallons a year -- to extract chemicals. "The situation of the Dead Sea is something that happened because there's a water shortage and it's needed for other uses," Cohen said. "You can say, 'Don't think of anything else. Let the Dead Sea have the water,' but no one will listen. They'll say, 'So we won't have water in Tel Aviv or the Negev or where?' "

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051802400.html

[donsu]

1. tick, tick, tick

nt

[hunter]

2. "Let the Dead Sea have the water" won't happen...

...no more than California would ever let the Central and Imperial Valleys revert to their natural states.

Using the Dead Sea as a basin for a seawater hydroelectric project is an old idea. Current plans would use the elevation difference to generate fresh water by reverse osmosis.

Here's an Israeli government web page:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2002/8/The%20Red%20Sea%20and%20the%20Mediterranean%20Dead%20Sea%20canals

Although such a project could stabilize water levels in the Dead Sea, there is a lot of speculation about what it would do to the water chemistry and thermoclines. One worst case scenario is that it would release toxic (and at very low concentrations smelly) clouds of hydrogen sulfide. Such a project might also damage existing salt extraction industries, especially if it caused a widespread percipitation of gypsum within the Dead Sea.

Other worst case scenarios would be if the canals and pipes of the project break, which would contaminate local fresh water supplies with seawater. The possibility that such canals and pipes could be sabatoged is a serious security concern.