The financial closure of the $1bn Disi water conveyance project in June has been heralded as an important step forward in Jordan’s struggle to solve its chronic water supply problems.

Construction of the 325-kilometre-long pipeline, which will take water from the south of the country to the kingdom’s capital, Amman, can now get under way. Once completed in four years’ time, it will pump about 100 million cubic metres a year (cm/y) of water from the Disi aquifer on the Saudi border and deliver it to the Abu Alanda and Dabuk reservoirs, which supply Amman with drinking water.

Short-term solution

Under a 25-year concession, the project is being jointly executed by Turkey’s Gama Holding and GE Energy Financial Services of the US. It involves digging 55 wells in the aquifer as well as assembling the pipeline.

However, despite the scale of the project, it is just a partial and temporary solution to Jordan’s problems. As a non-renewable fossil aquifer, Disi will only be able to provide water at this volume for 50 years. Furthermore, when it opens in 2013, the pipeline will not completely alleviate the water shortage in the north of the country. “The Disi project will not put an end to the country’s water crisis,” says Maysoon Zoubi, secretary general of Jordan’s Water & Irrigation Ministry. “It is an interim, emergency measure.”

According to the ministry, Jordan ranks among the four most water-deprived nations in the world. Annual per capita water availability in the kingdom is just 145 cm/y. This is far below the recognised international water poverty line of 500 cm/y and 96 per cent lower than the 360 cm/y per capita availability recorded in Jordan in 1946.

Today, the country’s renewable freshwater resources total about 750 million cm/y. Yet water demand exceeds 1.5 billion cm/y. Even with the use of non-renewable resources and treated sewage effluent, there is insufficient water to go around. In 2007, the kingdom’s water deficit was 638 million cubic metres.

To make supplies stretch, the water author-ities allocate water to end-users. In 2007, 64 per cent of the water supply was allocated for irrigation, 30 per cent went to the municipalities, 5 per cent to industry and 1 per cent to the tourism sector.

Despite contributing just 3 per cent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product, the agriculture sector receives a disproportionately high percentage of the water allocation. Households, meanwhile, receive water just once a week.

“Water is pumped to our houses for 36 hours before being interrupted, so we have to store it in rooftop tanks,” says Elias Salameh, a water specialist and professor at the University of Jordan. “Every Jordanian is living on the hygiene threshold when it comes to water supply.”

Although the Disi project will provide some relief in the short term, Jordan’s population is forecast to increase from 5.9 million in 2008 to 7.8 million by 2022, and without new water sources, the shortages can only worsen. By 2022, total water demand is predicted to reach 1.67 billion cm/y.

To tackle the problem, in 2008 the Water & Irrigation Ministry drew up a strategy for reforming the water sector by 2022. Central to this are plans to redress the balance between drinking water provision and water allocated for agricultural use.

Despite its severe water shortage, Jordan continues to produce crops for export - in effect sending water overseas while its own population goes without.

In the strategy document, the ministry pledges to provide 100 litres of water per capita a day for domestic use by 2022, and to introduce cost-reflective water tariffs to encourage the agricultural sector to cut its consumption and to select crops with higher economic returns for each unit of water used.

Banana plantations are one example of what the ministry describes as an “egregious waste of water”, as the fruit can be imported more cheaply than it can be grown locally.

The government intends to reduce or remove import duties on certain food items to enforce this change.

Efforts will also be directed at reducing water losses to 25 per cent of the total volume entering the transmission and distribution system by 2022, from the 50 per cent recorded in some parts of the country today. To achieve this, four more management contracts will be awarded by 2011 to rehabilitate antiquated networks, in addition to the two already in place.

“Everybody talks about water supply losses, but my question is ‘where does that water go?’ It leaks and returns into the groundwater aquifer but it is not lost, it is pumped again,” says Salameh. “The losses are financial to the authority, and of course there are health implications. But it is not really a quantity issue and reducing them [the losses] will not add much to the water resources of the country.”

Lack of resources remains the fundamental problem. Although some additional volumes could be accessed through grey water recycling and harnessing rainwater with dams, the quantities gained would have little effect on Jordan’s water deficit. Already the country reuses 91 per cent of its treated sewage effluent, which amounts to 100 million cm/y.

The long-lasting solution to Jordan’s water shortage could be another inter-basin transfer project, known as the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance. The project has been proposed jointly by Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to reverse the decline of water levels in the Dead Sea. But it could be configured to supply drinking water as well.

Declining resource

The water level in the Dead Sea has fallen from 394 metres below sea level in the 1960s to 418 metres below sea level in 2006. Over this time, the surface area of the sea has shrunk by a third, and the water level continues to drop by as much as 1 metre a year.

This dramatic decline has been brought about chiefly through the upstream diversion of water from the Jordan River over the past 40 years. The river is the main body of water feeding into the sea, but its inflow has been reduced to little more than a trickle following the construction of Israel’s National Water Carrier, which diverts 60 per cent of the river, in the 1960s, along with 60 dams in Syria and the King Abdullah Canal in Jordan. Today, more than 90 per cent of the river water is diverted before it reaches lower Jordan. The loss of this artery is one of the principal causes of the kingdom’s current dire situation.

The Red Sea-Dead Sea project, which has the backing of the World Bank, has been under discussion for many years. A $15.5m environmental and social assessment of the scheme is due for completion in 2011. Three scenarios are being studied: the implications of not going ahead with the project and allowing the Dead Sea to continue to decline; the transfer of Red Sea water to the Dead Sea just to stabilise the water level; and the same project with the addition of hydropower generation and desalination capabilities.

In the latter case, the initial desalination capacity would be 400 million cm/y, rising to 875 million cm/y by 2060, and the capital cost of the project would be $7.5bn.

Depending on the configuration of the project, 1-2 billion cm/y of water would be removed from the Red Sea, and the Dead Sea could be stabilised within 25 years. It is estimated that the construction would take about six years and would involve a combination of pipelines, tunnels and canals totalling 200km.

Since Jordan would be the main beneficiary of the desalinated water, receiving perhaps two-thirds of the initial production, the kingdom is much more enthusiastic about the project than the other parties. In its water strategy, the ministry says it needs the project to be implemented by 2022 or it will again face a water deficit of more than 500 million cm/y.

Whether that happens will likely be determined by the future political stability in the region. “The project requires a lot of funds and I think donor countries would not participate in such a megaproject unless there is real peace and stability,” says Moustafa Hasan, country manager for UAE-based water consultant Metito in Jordan.

Frustrated by a lack of serious commitment from Israel, in May the kingdom announced the Jordan Red Sea Water Development Project, a similar scheme, which it says it will undertake independently with private sector funding. The plans involve the construction of a 120 million-cm/y desalination plant in Aqaba by 2014, which would be expandable to 380 million cm/y, and another near the Dead Sea with a capacity of 200 million cm/y, expandable to 580 million cm/y, which would desalinate water as it is pumped from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea. The plants would supply water to Jordan’s proposed nuclear power plants (see feature, page 34), which would provide electricity in return.

By saying it is prepared to go it alone, Jordan has sent a strong message to the other parties involved in the original project, which will hopefully focus their minds. If not, the kingdom faces an even tougher project to plan and finance than the Disi scheme.

When it comes to water, Jordan has been a victim of its location in more ways than one. As a country with just 26km of coastline and limited renewable freshwater resources of its own, striking a balance in the supply and demand of water has always been difficult. But over the years, massive and sudden influxes of refugees caused by instability in the region have put even greater strain on its supplies. And today, as it strives to implement urgent measures to boost water availability, Jordan’s location within a volatile region is hindering it once again.

As much as Jordan would like to proceed with the Red Sea-Dead Sea project with the support of its neighbours, it cannot afford to wait for their differences to be settled. For Jordan, the wellbeing of its citizens is at stake, making water management a top priority on the government’s projects agenda.