More Said on the Red-Dead

The news came out of Amman that Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are relaunching a feasibility study to help save the rapidly vanishing Dead Sea.

Let's recall where that came from and let's not forget the late Professor Yuval Neeman.

A Med-Dead or Red-Dead Canal as a cooperation-inducing desalination project

A final example of cooperation-inducing design involves plans for a large-scale regional desalination project...

What follows is a conceptual proposal for a regional desalination complex, including sections on (1) background (the Agro-Industrial Complex [1960s] and the Med-Dead Canal [1980s]), (2) project description, (3) economic considerations, (4) environmental impacts, and (5) implementation in the framework of a regional water development plan.

Historical background

The plan was given a boost by Senate Resolution 155, sponsored by Senator Howard Baker, which supported development at three likely sites in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. Recently declassified reports show that a fourth site, at Gaza, was also planned in conjunction with a project for refugee resettlement (Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Gaza Area 1970) (see appendix I, map 26.)...Fifteen years later, in the early 1980s, the Israelis began planning a canal designed primarily for hydropower by bringing Mediterranean sea water across the Negev Desert and under the Judaean Hills to drop it 400 m to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth. The 800 MW of electricity that would have been made available by this Med-Dead Canal would, by itself, just have been worth the cost of the project, estimated at US$1,500-$5,000 million, but the benefits of several ancillary projects, made possible by the salt water for cooling or artificial lakes, added viability to the scheme (Mediterranean-Dead Sea Company Ltd 1983). That project was finally shelved, mostly on the question of the final cost.

The core of the complex would be either a Med-Dead or a Red-Dead Canal, with a new emphasis on desalination fuelled by hydropower and augmented with solar and conventional energy generation. Whereas the original plans were focused on power generation and unilateral development, a new approach would make available power and water, both fresh and salt, for agriculture, fish and algae ponds, industry, and even recreation on artificial lakes, in sparsely populated areas, to the benefit of populations from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank...A large plain south and east of Gaza and El-Arish, the Plain of Pelusium, was one site suggested for an agroindustrial complex (and, in 1902, as the possible site of a Jewish State) because of its suitability for a wide variety of agriculture. Similar tracts exist further inland in both the Sinai and Negev deserts if the intake were placed at Qatif, as planned for the Med-Dead Canal.

...The 400 m drop at the Dead Sea could be used not only for hydropower generation, but, in conjunction, could also be exploited for reverse-osmosis desalination - a pressure-dependent method using selective membranes adding even more fresh water as output...Such a Med-Dead, or Red-Dead, agro-industrial project would take advantage of sparsely populated lands for agricultural and industrial production utilizing two ports (Gaze and/or Eilat/Aqaba), add impetus to regional cooperation and refugee resettlement, and help to alleviate the area's water shortage.

...Either route would face clear obstacles in terms of political viability. One optimistic note, however, is that proponents of both the Med-Dead and the Red-Dead Canal include prominent nationalists on both sides of the Jordan River. The former Israeli Minister of Science and Technology, Yuval Ne'eman of the right-wing Tehiya party, has been actively supporting the MedDead Canal since its inception, while Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan has been a principal advocate of the Red-Dead Canal...