THE DYING DEAD SEA

[Anonymous]

Action call over dying Dead Sea
Standing
close to a grey, concrete building enclosing a spa, Ein Gedi kibbutz
member Merav Ayalon points at the brown mudflats a few metres
away.Twenty years ago the Dead Sea water would have lapped at her feet,
she says. But now, glittering in the distance, the sea lies almost one
km away from the spa.
“We are watching the sea vanishing,” says Ms
Ayalon. “I feel like the sea is a dying man calling out for help and
there’s nothing I can do.”In the last 50 years, the Dead Sea, the
world’s saltiest body of water and lowest point on earth, has seen its
surface area shrink by a third and its depth drop by 25 meters.The
water that once flowed into the Dead Sea from the River Jordan has been
diverted by Syria, Jordan, Israel for agricultural and hydro-electrical
projects.
Environmentalists are now warning that drastic action has
to be taken to avert an ecological disaster as the Dead Sea drops by a
metre every year.”It’s a catastrophe,” says Gideon Bromberg, the
director of Friends of the Earth in Israel. There’s nothing natural
about the demise of the Dead Sea”Thousands of sinkholes – where the
land collapses in on itself – have appeared on the shore’s coast
threatening the infrastructure. The Ein Gedi kibbutz closed a camp site
after a worker fell into a sinkhole.
Wildlife threatened
The
wetland surrounding the Dead Sea also supports endangered species such
as ibex, leopards and hyrax, sometimes called rock rabbits, and serves
as an important resting and breeding site for millions of birds
migrating between Europe and Africa each year.Both Israel and Jordan
offer farmers big subsidies to use water from the Jordan River for
agricultural use, says Mr Bromberg, and this should stop to allow a
greater flow into the Dead Sea.
“We’re saying water is very scarce
so why waste it on growing bananas,” he says. “We should support our
agricultural communities financially, but we also need to be guardians
of the land. Tourism is a better investment.”
At the Minerva resort,
tourists sit on white deck chairs under parasols, while others cake
themselves in mud or float on the Dead Sea. From round the world, many
of the visitors expressed concern about the sea’s shrinkage.
“It’s
shocking really,” says Benjamin Harries, visiting from New York. “They
shouldn’t be able to get away with it. If there’s anything they can do
then the governments should do it.”
Possible options
One solution
for replenishing the Dead Sea, is to build a 200-km canal to bring
water from the Red Sea to the region. Water could be pumped to Jordan
where it could be desalinated to produce fresh water for Jordan, Israel
and the Palestinian Authority.The remaining water would then flow from
the mountains down to the Dead Sea. But some experts think that the
concerned governments will baulk at the price-tag of a potential
project.
“I think we have much more urgent problems to spend our
money on,” says Dr Arie ben-Zvi, former director of the Israeli
Hydrological Board.But others strongly disagree. “Nature gave us a gift
and we’re ruining it,” says Ms Ayalon. “I’m afraid that when my three
nephews have grown up that the Dead Sea will only be a memory.”

[Author]

May 8, 2006 at 9:58 AM