Dead Sea Canal Peace Project…Let it Flow

There has been much talk about water shortage, eco-energy, peace and the drying up of the Dead Sea. Here’s a solution, long talked about and now may solve all of these (and it might even cover up that embarrassing bald spot on the top or your head! – well no.)

“Together with President Shimon Peres and the King of Jordan, I believe we will succeed in building the Peace Channel,” Yitzhak Tshuva said Wednesday morning in New York at the opening of the two-day U.S. Israel Executive Summit.

While it might not restore follicle damage this project has much potential creating opportunities for desalination and electric plants for both Israel and Jordan. It can potentially be harmful as well.

Eilon Adar, director of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, warned that major natural engineering projects inevitably create negative impacts. He explains that a canal rushing with seawater in a seismologically volatile valley could spell disaster for the area’s underground freshwater aquifers. A leak from the canal for several days, and we could contaminate all — or at least a significant portion of — the aquifers.

An influx of seawater would change the chemical makeup of the Dead Sea. The sea is naturally fed by fresh water from the Jordan River and its tributaries and by seasonal flash floods running out of desert canyons on the Israeli and Jordanian banks. But channeling in seawater would likely dump surpluses of calcium, sulfur, and gypsum into the sea. The fact is that this water will raise the Dead Sea to its original level. This is positive, but we also need to examine the hydrochemical evolution that will be caused.

Let’s hope that Teshuva uses some of his billions to make sure that this project is actually good and not just a publicity stunt at the expense of out little country.

Sources: Haaretz, National Geographic