Why is the Dead Sea dying? Disappearing act

ACROSS FROM JERICHO, on the Jordan side of the Jordan River, is the site where Jesus may have been baptized. It is 300 meters east of the river. During the decades of conflict between Jordan and Israel this area was a military zone, strewn with mines and closed to unauthorized personnel, but since the 1994 Peace Treaty the mines have been cleared and the site is being developed by the Jordanian Ministry of Tourism. Access roads, parking lots, a tourist center and a path to the river have been built. The ruins of three Byzantine churches have been uncovered, and Pope John Paul II has given his imprimatur to the site by visiting it.

Tourists can walk down the path to the Jordan, but they had better not try to be baptized in it, for this river, so rich in religious symbolism, is dangerously polluted. It is also vanishing. And if they want to float in the Dead Sea--not far from the baptism site--enjoy its unusual buoyancy and the benefits of its unique mineral contents, they had better come soon. Its level is going down a meter a year. It could disappear by 2050.

What is making the Jordan vanish and the Dead Sea die? The Jordan Basin is being sucked dry to supply the farms and cities of Israel, Jordan and Syria with water. The center of the basin is Lake Tiberias (also known as the Sea of Galilee or Lake Kinneret), a natural reservoir for Israel. It receives water from the north and is controlled by the Deganya Gate at its southern end. Israel withdraws from the lake about 700 million cubic meters per year, which it puts into the National Water Carrier, the conduit supplying its population centers all the way to the Negev.

The country takes additional water from the lake for use by nearby towns, cities and farms. Because all these extractions total more than the average annual recharge, the level of the lake is falling. At the end of the summer of 2001, it reached its lowest level on record. The "red line"--the level at which water extraction should stop--has been repeatedly lowered by the Israeli water commissioner. It is now 2.5 meters lower than the original mark of 213 meters below sea level.

Today, no good-quality water flows through the Deganya Gate into the Jordan. Rather, brine is collected from springs on the floor of the lake and on its shores, carried around it and dumped into the river. Along the Jordan's zigzag path to the Dead Sea, 100 kilometers as the crow flies, other saline waters and pollutants flow into it, but very little pure water.

Emptying into the Jordan ten kilometers south of Lake Tiberias, the Yarmouk River has historically supplied the river with 400 million cubic meters of water per year. But today the Jordanian government diverts water from the Yarmouk into the King Abdullah Canal to supply the people and farms of the Jordan Valley. Syria extracts water further upstream to supply its agriculture, and Israel withdraws water to supply the farms and settlements on the eastern shores of Lake Tiberias and in the Golan Heights. Thus, the discharge of the Yarmouk into the Jordan has been reduced to almost nothing. The only other major river flowing into the Jordan, the Zarqa, is blocked by Jordan's King Talal Dam. Streams and springs exist on the Jordan's east and west side, but their flow is minimal and seasonal.

Almost completely deprived of fresh water, the Jordan River has become a sewer. In addition to the brine dumped in at the northern end, run-off from Israeli fish farms and untreated sewage from Jewish settlements along the ridge of the Jordan Valley and from the Arab community of Jericho make their way into the river bed from the west. Untreated sewage and polluted irrigation return-flow, coming from farms and communities in Jordan, run into it from the east.

In the 1950s about 1.3 billion cubic meters of water a year flowed into the Dead Sea. The flow is now down to 300 million. When William Lynch, an American naval explorer, visited the mouth of the Jordan in April 1848, he estimated the river to be 180 yards wide and three feet deep. Now it is a few meters wide, more a creek than a river.

The Dead Sea is at the lowest point on earth, and nothing flows out of it. While seasonal streams on the eastern and western shores have contributed small amounts of water, the bulk of its supply has come from the Jordan, and evaporation has kept the level of the sea constant. However, since the 1960s the flow from the Jordan has dropped by 90 percent, and the surface level of the Dead Sea has dropped 25 meters. The southern end has dried up and is more an industrial zone than a sea. It is dotted with the evaporation ponds and factories of the Arab Potash Works on the Jordanian side, and the Dead Sea Works on the Israeli side.

Along the shores of the deeper northern end are stark cliffs, flowing springs and biblical sites. This is where the tourist hotels are located, perched on bluffs overlooking water that moves farther and farther away.

THE DISAPPEARANCE of the deep blue, mineral-rich Dead Sea would be a disaster for tourism. Its demise also would have catastrophic effects on the area's hydrodynamic equilibrium. The sea's high-density salt water acts as a barrier, keeping the fresh water in the aquifers surrounding it from draining downwards, absorbing salts and escaping into the Mediterranean. These aquifers are used to irrigate farms, bring water to villages and feed springs, some of which are important to tourism.