Amman - The Red-Dead Canal Project's environmental assessment and feasibility study will conclude six months ahead of schedule, a government official said on Thursday.
"We have cut the time frame by six months, thus the economic and environmental studies, which began last May, will be finalised in August or September next year," Jordan Valley Authority Secretary General Musa Jamaani told The Jordan Times yesterday.
The decision, which reduced the total time for the studies to two years, was taken during a meeting earlier this month in Ein Jedi on the Israeli side of the Dead Sea between the project's partners, he said.
"During the meeting, we reduced the studies' time frame and cancelled some procedures that would have resulted in duplication," explained Jamaani, who heads the project's steering committee on the Jordanian side.
The two studies are estimated to cost $15 million, with French company Coyne et Bellier carrying out the feasibility study, and British firm Environmental Resources Management conducting the environmental assessment.
The two companies provide monthly progress reports to the project's steering committee, which includes representatives from the World Bank and the project's three parties (Jordan, Palestine and Israel).
The Red-Dead Canal Project is part of international efforts to save the Dead Sea, which has been shrinking at the rate of one metre per year, largely due to the diversion of water from the Jordan River for agricultural and industrial use.
During the past 20 years alone, it has plunged more than 30 metres, with experts warning that it could dry up within the next 50 years.
Due to the water level drop, the sea's surface area has shrunk by at least 33 per cent over the last 56 years with an average annual inflow decrease from 1,200 million cubic metres (mcm) to around 250mcm of water.
The project, which will alleviate pressure on renewable and nonrenewable water resources in the region by providing about 850mcm of potable water annually, entails the construction of a 200-kilometre canal from Aqaba on the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.
The environment-focused project seeks to pump one billion cubic metres of water annually with the aim of raising water levels in the shrinking lake from 408 metres below sea level to 315 metres.
By Hana Namrouqa
© Jordan Times 2009
