Red-Dead project ‘everlasting solution’ to water shortages in Jordan
Unconventional water sources are the Kingdom’s long-term solution to its water dilemma, government officials said on Wednesday, indicating that increasing demand on water has exhausted surface and underground water sources.
Now that the Ministry of Water and Irrigation has utilised all available methods to meet the increasing demand for water, estimated at 21 per cent annually, it is now exploring seawater desalination and digging out water from deep aquifers, the officials indicated.
In addition to exploring “unconventional water resources”, the ministry is pressing ahead with its campaign to end violations on water networks and resources, ministry spokesperson Omar Salameh said, noting that retrieving lost water is equal to finding a new source of water, given the volume of water lost in violations on the network and resources.
Considering the project as the “cornerstone of all efforts to solve Jordan’s water scarcity”, the ministry sees the Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project (Red-Dead) as its everlasting solution to a shortage of water in Jordan.
Under the first phase, a total of 300 million cubic metres (mcm) of water will be pumped each year. In its following phases, the Red-Dead project will see up to 2 billion cubic metres of seawater transferred from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea annually, according to the ministry.
The Red-Dead project’s main components are a seawater intake structure; an intake pump station; a seawater pipeline; a desalination plant with a capacity of 65-85mcm per year; a desalination brine conveyance pipeline; two lifting pump stations; hydropower plants; and discharge facilities at the Dead Sea.
Read the full article by Hana Namrouqa via The Jordan Times.
[Photo by David Spinks | Flickr]
