- "...without an intensive engineering effort, the
sea's water level would continue to recede... adjacent ground water would
disappear, surrounding land would buckle and collapse, and nearby wildlife
and vegetation would be lost."
-
- JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Dead
Sea was dying, and only a radical engineering effort could save it, Israel's
Minister of the Environment said.
-
- The Dead Sea gets its name from its heavy salt content,
because no aquatic creatures can live in it. Now there's a new "death
threat" - the Dead Sea is drying up and disappearing.
-
- An Israeli TV reporter, illustrating the government report,
stood on a spot where, just 20 years ago, water met land. Now that point
was 600m of parched ground away, he said, as the sea gradually receded.
-
- Because it is landlocked in a hot desert area, evaporation
is high, accounting for the dense salt concentration that allows bathers
to float above the water with no effort. The area is popular for spas and
treatments, with luxury hotels on both sides.
-
- For millennia, the balance was maintained by the Dead
Sea's only water source, the Jordan River, pouring in from the north. In
recent decades, however, both Israel and Jordan have been tapping in to
irrigate large swaths of agricultural land along the narrow river that
divides the two countries, robbing the Dead Sea of its replacement water.
-
- A five-year drought has added to the woes of Dead Sea,
which occupies the lowest point on earth, 400m below sea level.
-
- The Israeli study said that without an intensive engineering
effort, the sea's water level would continue to recede by as much as a
meter a year, adjacent ground water would disappear, surrounding land would
buckle and collapse, and nearby wildlife and vegetation would be lost.
-
- Environment Minister Yehudit Neot said she would ask
the Israeli Cabinet to hold a detailed discussion on the study's conclusions.
-
- "If the conclusions are not implemented, there is
a real danger to the future of the Dead Sea as a world class natural resource,"
Neot said.
-
- The Environment Ministry study said that to secure the
sea's future, engineers would have to develop a new infrastructure of bridges
and roads leading to its shores.
-
- It recommended that resources be applied only in places
where remedial engineering efforts would be successful, suggesting that
many areas were already beyond repair.
-
- Plans to use the difference in elevation between the
Dead Sea and other bodies of water might also help solve the problem. The
latest idea is to build a channel between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead
Sea, with waters rushing downhill driving electricity power stations.
-
- The water pouring into the Dead Sea from the south would
counter the deterioration, but environmentalists warn that water from the
Red Sea is salty, while the Jordan River supplies fresh water, and this
could have adverse consequences.
-
- However, the Red Sea-Dead Sea channel project is still
in planning stages, and experts say it might be prohibitively expensive.
-
- The Dead Sea is 60km long and about 18km wide. Both Israel
and Jordan mine its extensive phosphate deposits with evaporation pools.
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- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7764772%255E1702,00.html
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