Red to Dead Project: World's biggest desalination plant to rise in Jordan

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The 12-billion dollar red to dead sea project for replenishing the receding Dead Sea also includes plans for hydro electric power stations and desalinated drinking water for Palestine, Jordan and Israel. CGTN's Stephanie Freid takes us to Jordan and the site of what will be the biggest desalination plant in the world.

ODED FIXLER RED TO DEAD SEA PROJECT DIRECTOR, ISRAEL "We will be pumping from the Red Sea about 2 billion cubic meters per year. In the full project we are going to desalinate about 900 million cubic meters a year."

900 million cubic meters of water is roughly the amount of water you'd find in three hundred and fifty thousand Olympic swimming pools.

Most of that desalinated water will go to water-starved Jordan.

STEPHANIE FREID THE DEAD SEA, JORDAN "Jordan is one of the world's poorest countries when it comes to water resources. Here, water rationing is a way of life. So building a desalination plant, that's a way out of water woes."

It will be built south of here along this desert road. It's being billed as the world's biggest desalination facility on screen shot of map, please add credit: "Courtesy Shira Kronich, Arava Institute"

Israel will be consulting with Jordanian colleagues on technical and procedural matters.

MUNQETH MEHYAR, DIRECTOR ECOPEACE MIDDLE EAST, JORDAN "The importance of this project, also, is that it will give Jordan an entry into the desalination world. We don't have much experience in desalination while Israel has world class experience, I think. Or the best in the world."

Water pumped north from the Red Sea will be treated at the desalination plant and brine mixed with marine water wil then be piped further north to the eroding Dead Sea.

Remaining treated water will be earmarked for agriculture, industry and consumption.

The brine mixture, in the first project phase, is expected to cut Dead Sea erosion by thirty three percent.

The Red to Dead Sea Project for pumping, hydro-electric power, replenishing and desalinating has been in planning stages for decades. Will it go through now?

NADR AMR, MANAGER DEAD SEA SPA, JORDAN "Talking so long and so much about it gave me, personally, the doubt that it will ever happen."

MUNQETH MEHYAR, DIRECTOR ECOPEACE MIDDLE EAST, JORDAN "It's doable. It's very much doable. And that's why I have confidence in executing this first phase, at least."

Officials say the project will be in full commission in 2021. For CGTN this is Stephanie Freid, at the Dead Sea in Jordan.