What is the 'Red to Dead Sea' project?

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The Dead Sea is dying

The Dead Sea, a body of water shared by Jordan, Israel and Palestine, is the lowest point on earth and has such high mineral and saline content that nothing can live in it and visitors to the sea float on top.

Mining and man-made dams are causing the world wonder to recede, and water levels are dropping one meter per year.

Saving the Dead Sea

A mega-plan to put water back into the sea calls for building a pipeline between the Red Sea, about 300 kilometers south, to the Dead Sea. The World Bank has endorsed the 12-billion-US-dollar project and five consortia, including one from China, are in the final bidding phase.

CGTN Photo

Desalination, water swapping, hydro-electricity

Beyond replenishing the Dead Sea, the project also calls for building the world’s biggest desalination plant and hydro-electric stations and water sales and swaps between the sides to deliver much-needed drinking water to Jordan and Palestine.

“The deal is complex. It’s saving the Dead Sea, it’s desalinating water, it’s water conveyance, it’s a swap deal and yes, it’s cooperation. Regional cooperation," said Oded Fixler, Red to Dead Sea project director.

Environmental risks

It is warned that the mixture of seawater and brine the project calls for to replenish the Dead Sea may, instead, destroy it.

EcoPeace Middle East Environmentalist Gundi Shahar told CGTN that in environmental feasibility studies, combining the waters gave rise to algae, gypsum and a slimy, stinky layer of unknown bacteria.

EcoPeace Middle East environmentalist Gundi Shahar. /CGTN Photo‍

“We might bring up the Dead Sea but I believe we will kill tourism and I believe also we will kill the mineral industries,” Shahar said.

The conduit is pegged to be installed along a major, active seismic rift – a major earthquake could damage pipes and leak saltwater into underground drinking water aquifers.

The bottom line

Project initiators say the World Bank would not have endorsed the multi-billion-dollar project if they weren’t certain the benefits outweigh risks. The plan has been in the making for more than two decades – phase one is scheduled to start in 2019.