Is the canal a blessing or a cry for generations?

Running amok for a project that will harm the environment in the face of the inability to build large projects, what will be the winning approach, in the sea canal project from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea that was approved by the government a few months ago

The article appears in the November-December 2007 issue of the journal Structures published by Merav-Daskalo

Among the other ideas put forward by Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl in his book "Altneuland" from 1902 (translated by Nahum Sokolov into the name of Tel Aviv), was the digging of a canal that would flow water from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, an idea based on the significant height differences between the two seas (the Dead Sea is the place the lowest in the world). This planned canal was later given the name "The Canal of the Seas".

In Wikipedia, where the quote in the first paragraph is given, they add that Herzl was a lawyer by profession and not an engineer, and he based his idea on a plan put forward by an engineer named Max Verkart in 1899, detailing the mining of a canal that would carry Mediterranean water along the following route: from the Mediterranean through a valley Jezreel and through the Beit Shan Valley and the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea.

In the 80s, the Minister of Energy at the time, the late Prof. Yuval Naaman, put forward a proposal to cut a canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea that would bypass Beer Sheva from the south and reach the Dead Sea, with part of it going through tunnels. Before the water fell into the Dead Sea, it was supposed to drive a hydroelectric turbine. In an interview I conducted with him a few months before his death, on the occasion of his XNUMXth birthday, Yuval Ne'man expressed his regret that he was unable to realize the Sea Canal project, and that the economic arguments against him that caused his overthrow were inaccurate, and according to him the cancellation was due to the fact that the current generation is unable to carry out national projects Big like the national carrier in the fifties.

On March 11, 2007, the Israeli government approved Shimon Peres' "Economic Peace Corridor" project plan as a "national project", which receives priority within the government's actions. The Economic Peace Corridor plan extends from the Gulf of Eilat along the Arava to the Yarmouch River (the border with Syria) along 500 km of border.

Among the projects that will benefit from shortened procedures and priority in action are a pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea with a length of about 160 km, the establishment of tourist projects along it and agriculture in the Arabah, water desalination and electricity generation; establishment of a joint Israeli/Jordanian airport in the Aqaba area; An agricultural industrial zone in the Jordan Valley with the assistance of the Japanese government; Israeli/Palestinian industrial zone in northern Samaria; Connecting Israel's railway network with the Jordanian railway network to enable the movement of goods from Iraq and Jordan to Nahal Haifa and back in the future. The program will be carried out with mainly non-governmental funding through bodies such as the World Bank, countries and international bodies.

Erez Ron, the head of the Peace Corridor project, which is subordinate to the Negev and Galilee Development Ministry, described to "Structures" the transport route, popularly known as the Canal of the Seas. The opening of the pipeline will be on the coast of the Red Sea on the border between Israel and Jordan, in an area that today is actually no man's land. According to Ron, there is a symbolic meaning to the fact that both sides hold the pumping faucet in Eilat/Aqaba. After that, due to seismic considerations, the canal will enter about 5 kilometers into Jordanian territory. The water will be raised in the middle of the prairie, in front of Fran, to a height of about 200 meters and at a certain point north of Fran, and south of the Dead Sea, there is a waterfall in the territory of Jordan from 107 meters above sea level to 375 meters below sea level. This waterfall will be used to create most of the energy required to precipitate the water (a pressure of 70 atmospheres is required, and the waterfall can only provide 47 of them), therefore a power plant will also be installed on the site to produce the required energy. Due to the method in which the desalination is carried out, half of the water - about a billion cubic meters will be desalinated, while the salt will be transferred to the other half - and this excess water - the concentrate water, will flow into the Dead Sea by gravity, with part of its route starting in Jordan, crossing the border, and being transported through a canal to the northern basin of the Sea The salt, and there will flow into the Mediterranean Sea, where the water may be used for sports activities. According to Ron, this route is better because it requires fewer permits, and it does not require decommissioning land that could be used for agriculture. "Personally, as the project manager, I prefer that most of the transport goes through Jordan, in the Negev it is difficult to get land, it always hurts someone and it always comes at the expense of another project or hurts the limitations of the Ministry of Defense."

According to Ron, the desalinated water will be purchased by the Jordanian government and transferred to thirsty Amman, at a price of about a dollar per cubic meter, an expensive price but probably the cheapest it will be able to obtain when the project starts operating in about a decade.

Ron surprises and says that the World Bank is willing to finance the program not because of its product - fresh water for the Kingdom of Jordan, but to save the Dead Sea, which is drying up, and phenomena are beginning to form around it, the most famous of which is the sinkholes.

Dr. Assaf Rosenthal, expert in environmental affairs, and formerly director of nature reserves in Israel. He lives in Eilat, and offers his opinion as an expert but also as a resident of the Arava, which he says is anxious for its fate. "The Dead Sea is drying up and receding, enormous damage is being caused to the environment to its inhabitants and to tourism, a situation that brought up again the vision of the canal, but this time the direction is to the south, that is, a canal that will flow water from the Gulf of Eilat to the Dead Sea, the main "excuse" for the megalomaniac initiative is to restore water to the Dead Sea , on the same occasion, electricity generation, water desalination, development and settlement.
The promoters announce the development of tourism and other economic activities around the canal, this despite the fact that it is clear to every bar-by-rab that because of the structure of the area, large parts of the canal will be. .. pipeline, the entrepreneurs' reference is to the "development of the Negev" and the means of production, and the "settlement of thousands of people" as if the steppe is empty of inhabitants, it has no means of production, there is no tourism, there are no residents and no residents live there, in other words the entrepreneurs return to the old slogan "Nalvishach Shlomat Concrete and cement"... the same slogan that led to many environmental disasters, the biggest and most well-known of which was the desiccation of the patient."

"Despite the repeated announcements by the entrepreneurs about "the march towards implementation" the voice of the green bodies will not be heard. ” agrees Rosenthal.

The danger: the salting of the groundwater in Arava and damage to the water supply to Eilat

According to Rosenthalf, the canal will carry saline water above the underground reservoir of the Arava water. In the south of the Arava the water is indeed brackish, but in the north its salinity is low and many wells even have fresh water, any leakage and leakage will cause the underground reservoirs to become salty, that is, damage to the water supply to Eilat, the settlements of the Arava and the agricultural fields, leakage and leakage may happen due to many mechanical reasons and plans, But mainly because of the Syrian-African fault, the entire area is subject to constant geological activity, the fluctuations and tremors are due to the movement of continental plates in three directions, fluctuations, tremors that have caused damage to buildings in the past, it can be expected that the geology "will not be quiet" because of a megalomaniac project. The salinization of the Arava water reservoir (north and south) will harm the animals and plants, in any case there is already dehydration of the vegetation in the wadis that go down to the Arava due to increased pumping, of course the damage will also be to the water supply to all the settlements, for agriculture and of course to Eilat."

According to Rosenthal, another factor that must be taken into account is the effect of the pumping as well as the water that will be transported north on the microclimate in Eilat: "The Bay of Eilat is a body of water with no outlet (north), a special and unique body of water with a rotational flow regime, life (fish, corals, vegetation ) depend on the water flow regime, the pumping of hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water will affect the flow regime and cause it to change, who knows how this change will affect the fauna in the gulf? In addition, Eilat is known for its dry climate, a dryness that eases the oppressive heat in the summer, most of the year blows in a (dry) north-northeast oriented wind region, a large body of water northeast of Eilat will increase the (relatively low) humidity around the city by a significant percentage, accordingly / In the future, different local climate conditions (moist) will be created along the canal in the Arava, (wherever there is an open canal). These climatic conditions will intensify in the vicinity of the power plants, since there will be waterfalls and open reservoirs. Already today, the salt ponds create a moisture "screen."

A third factor that is expected to be affected is the Dead Sea itself. "According to the plan, waterfalls will generate electricity for the desalination of part of the water, which means that water with a salinity higher than 4.5% (the salinity of the water in the Eilat Bay) will reach the Dead Sea. How will this water affect the mineral composition of the Dead Sea water? After all, the main purpose of the project is to "save the Dead Sea". There are two assumptions: chemists from the Dead Sea factories claim that a "white gypsum carpet will form on the surface of the water", according to preliminary tests by other parties, there is a chance that there will be "a bloom of algae and bacteria that will color the sea red". A sea covered with a layer of plaster or "blooming" in red, is certainly not the goal of the entrepreneurs."

The main argument that he says should solve the problem is the economic argument "According to the statements of the developers of the sea canal, it will cost about 5 billion dollars. According to experts in economics and important costs and feasibility, the establishment of water desalination systems (on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea) for approximately 650 million cubic meters of water per year will cost a billion dollars. Desalination of water in such an amount will allow the Jordan to flow through its course, back to the Dead Sea. According to calculations, there are about 4 billion left to generate electricity without harming the environment and let the (natural) situation be restored to its original state." Ron has heard the argument as brought up by Rosenthal in the past, and he has an answer, but for that - at the end of the article.

Galit Cohen, who is responsible for environmental planning, says that the main goal of the World Bank, according to the statement of the heads of the organization, is not water and electricity, but saving the Dead Sea. According to her, the people of the World Bank are currently checking the engineering-economic feasibility of the project, and at a later stage a tender will be issued to examine the environmental and social consequences. One company will examine the consequences of the canal or pipeline along the entire length of the Arava and another will examine the consequences of water full of life on the Dead Sea, for fear of the formation of what is known there as gray pulp.

Cohen agrees with most of the arguments put forward by Rosenthal, but says that she supports the need to carry out comprehensive tests of their consequences - "start with the Red Sea where they will pump the water and what are the ecological and other consequences of this action on the Red Sea, which is a small and narrow bay. The second problematic part is the consequences on the groundwater in the prairie where the pipeline/canal is supposed to pass. This is a very sensitive area in terms of the ecological balance, special characteristics, what does it mean for the water. What's more, it's a biologically active area. And as mentioned and the third part of the consequences, these are the consequences of the Dead Sea, what will the mixing of the water cause, which is a water source with biological and chemical characteristics that are completely different from the Dead Sea. There are very fundamental environmental questions and currently they are only difficult questions without an answer. Not enough research has been done over the years. We as the Ministry of Environmental Protection are preparing to stand all the way and ask the questions and get the answers before a decision is made.
We have incorporated these aspects into the World Bank specification. Beyond the same programming examination, the specifications of the tender dictate the possibility of carrying out studies that will accompany the project as needed along the way. If we identify knowledge gaps and we already identify such, we will ask that they conduct research on these topics in order to complete the required knowledge.

The buildings that will be built in the area, such as the hydroelectric power plant and the facilities at the mouth of the Dead Sea, will have to withstand high seismological sensitivity. We are talking about an area that has a ground fault. The entire western coast of the Dead Sea has a very substantial land failure. How do you deal with it? How do you raise the water to a height of 200 meters. In short, the question is how do you build a canal or a pipe like this almost 200 kilometers long in one of the seismologically sensitive areas with a diameter 4-5 times the diameter of the national water main. How do you build such a facility that will withstand new earthquakes in the future.

According to Ron, in response to Rosenthal and Cohen, the project has positive environmental consequences: "The positive consequences are that we will stop the drop in the level of the Dead Sea, we will supply desalinated water to Jordan in the most efficient and cheapest way, and we will create a real strategic cooperation between Israel and Jordan around a project for generations. Another advantage that could be - the development of the prairie, if we decide around the movel to do development projects in the prairie based on the water that is already flowing. Even if the truck passes through Jordanian territory, there will be no problem to take a branch from it and fill a lake measuring 1.5 by 1.5 km, seal it properly and build holiday homes, sports and attractions around it. The water will be there and in very large quantities.

As for the three arguments, Ron said that we must check how the pumping of 2 billion cubic meters per year will affect the Red Sea, a bay that has fish and corals that must not be harmed, experts who have done similar projects around the world pumped huge amounts of water from similar sensitive places and the problems can be solved. As for the salty water in the Arava, Ron claims that it is possible to build a pipeline that will be resistant to earthquakes up to medium level tremors and it will be possible to dig it deep into the ground so that it cannot be damaged, and today there are technological ways to prevent leaks.

As for the fear of evaporation, which Rosenthal expressed, Ron says that in a closed pipe or tunnel, which is planned to be the canal for most of its length, there is no problem of evaporation. "The third problem we are dealing with - the consequences on the Dead Sea. On the one hand they want to save it, on the other hand they influence its chemical composition - today the percentage of salts is high, they flow water with a lower percentage of salts. It will affect the Dead Sea. They are afraid of the formation of small gypsum crystals - there are experts that it will happen for sure and there are experts who believe that the gypsum will sink and we will not feel it. There is research that needs to be continued. They have another 5-10 years to explore until water flows there. There are those who fear the formation of biological life in the upper part because the water will remain in the upper part of the sea because there is no real mixing, this biology can also affect the color of the water.

What do you think of the argument of the green organizations, according to which if building a desalination plant in the Mediterranean costs a billion dollars and the canal costs 5 times, then why not build a plant, transport the water to Jordan and to save the Dead Sea simply desalinize more and let the Kinneret water flow into the Dead Sea?

Ron: "I have heard the proposal several times and the answer is divided into two. First, the Jordanians are not ready to buy desalinated water from Israel. For 20 years Israel has been trying to sell them water, to help them from Israel's resources or from water desalination in Israel. They are not ready to buy water from the Mediterranean. They want more water from the Kinneret. They want their share of the pie to increase all the time, but they are not ready for their drinking water to be treated in Israel, because they do not want to be dependent on us. They want a desalination plant in Jordan that is based on water that is either a Jordanian resource or at least a shared resource - the Mediterranean Sea is not a shared resource with Jordan.

As for the last part of the claim - the national carrier in the last two years provides 242 million cubic meters in 2006 and 227 million cubic meters in 2007. "In the past, they would pump 400 and 500 million cubic meters and flow them through the national carrier. The working assumption of the professional watermen - that it will remain around 200 million cubic meters. In order for the salt sea to return to the level of minus 400, 1.2 billion is needed a year so that it climbs half a meter a year until it reaches minus 400 it will take about 50 years because by the time water flows into it the level will drop to 430. It decreases by 1.10 per year. If we climb half a meter a year from another decade, we will therefore reach the desired level in only sixty years. And besides, even if the water were enough, no one in the State of Israel would agree in the coming years to give up the water it receives from the Kinneret and pour it into the Dead Sea because it is much cheaper than desalinated water."

The financing of the canal, according to him, will not fall on the Israeli taxpayer but on the private sector that will look at this project as a business and finance it with the BOT method, like the Trans-Israel road. buy them and that is probably the cheapest price she can get and yes from projects. These two things may return the cost over 40-50 years as well as the operating cost." Ron fears that if the Jordanians see that the Israelis are dragging their feet, they will carry out the project themselves.

Is Prof. Tzedek right in believing that the State of Israel is no longer capable of carrying out large projects?

"Taking on a big project today is indeed a problem. Look at how long it takes to raise the Crossing of Israel, which has surprisingly gained momentum in recent years and there is tremendous pressure to complete the northern and southern sections, after they had been talking about it since the 500s. And we will see how difficult it is to solve the problems surrounding the Carmel tunnel. And even smaller projects, the establishment of industrial zones, electricity generation, etc. are delayed. Look at the solar company that received a $500 million project in California to produce 4 megawatts a year from solar energy using technology developed in Israel. She wants to establish a similar project in the Ashlim area. The disadvantage of the project is that it takes over a rather large patch of land of 4 by XNUMX km and it will all be covered with collectors, but it supplies electricity to much of the State of Israel in a clean way - the Greens are opposed. Schwarzenegger decided that California would be the state with the flag of environmental quality and therefore he is going for the project. It has large deserts, but we also have areas in the Negev. They are also trying to establish smaller sections in Arava, kilometer by kilometer. It is very difficult to move in the country. The Planning Administration, the Ministry of the Interior, the problems of an electricity company. Today, even Peres would not succeed in building the reactor or establishing the aviation industry. This threat also exists on the smaller projects such as a joint airport in Aqaba.

Buksa: The hotels in the Dead Sea will not be affected by the sea canal, unlike in the northern part of the Dead Sea, where the water level drops, in the southern part, and in particular in pool number 5 of the Dead Sea factories, the level actually rises and at a rapid rate of 20 centimeters per year due to the accumulation of salt on the bottom, and they Data at risk of flooding. The solution for them should be digging the bottom with heavy tools. The water that will be left after desalination will reach the northern part of the Dead Sea, the meeting point between the two parts of the Dead Sea is 400 meters below sea level, and as Ron calculated, a sea canal that would send a billion cubic meters a year to the Dead Sea would fill it for 50 years, so that the sea canal is which will cause the flooding of the hotels but the factories of the Dead Sea.

And more about the Dead Sea, the drop in the level there caused the formation of sinkholes. According to Ron, there is a direct connection between the drop in the level and the expansion of the sinkhole phenomenon. If we fill the Dead Sea, the sinkholes that are in the area of ​​the sea itself will be filled with water, and if we got rid of them, the sinkholes outside the water area will not expand any more and the phenomenon will stop.

Galit Cohen from the Ministry of the Environment estimates that if the water reaches the level again, most of the sinkholes, which were created as a result of the underground water leaving and leaving caves with loose ceilings, which are opened from time to time, will be covered with water. However, it is possible that new sinkholes may develop, west of Route 90, the main road along the Israeli coast of the Dead Sea. In her opinion, there is a need for research on this topic as well.