Landsats Aff

Water – I/L – Jordan

Lack of management strategies in Jordan lead to unconventional and ecologically damaging policies—provides access to contaminated water.
Red Sky News 11 (http://redskynews.com/?p=8926, accessed 7/7/11) CJQ

In its desperate efforts to battle chronic water shortages, Jordan, one of the world’s 10 driest countries, is mulling “unconventional” and “environmentally unfriendly” plans, experts say. The challenge is huge for this tiny country where desert covers 92 percent of the territory and the population of 6.3 million is growing. Critics say the government’s efforts to manage the country’s limited water resources and generate new ones are being hindered by a strategy which at best is chaotic. Jordan is tapping into the ancient southern Disi aquifer, despite concerns about high levels of radiation, while studies are underway to build a controversial canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. “Unconventional projects, like Disi for example, are environmentally unfriendly,” water expert Dureid Mahasneh, a former Jordan Valley Authority chief, told AFP. The 990-million-dollar project seeks to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer, 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman, officials say. The plan is to provide the capital Amman with water for 50 years, said water ministry official Bassam Saleh, who is in charge of the project that was launched in 2008 and is due to be completed in 2012. A 2008 study by Duke University, in the United States, shows that Disi’s water has 20 times more radiation than is considered safe, with radium content that could trigger cancers. “Our research shows that the Disi aquifer is heavily contaminated with radium,” according to the study done by the Durham, North Carolina team which tested 37 pumping wells in the aquifer. Mahasneh said “Disi water should not be touched.” “How can you go for a non-renewable water resource that is contaminated with radiation and needs treatment?” But the government has brushed aside such concerns. “We know there is radiation in Disi because it is underground water but we will treat it by diluting it with an equal amount of water from other sources,” said Saleh. Jordan University professor Elias Salameh agreed. “The radioactivity can be treated, and it is not a complicated matter.” Munqeth Mehyar, of the Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), warned against abusing the water resource. “If we overpump the Disi water, we will suffer from problems like sinkholes for example. And there are no studies that tell you for sure how long the aquifer water would last,” he said. Jordan has also agreed in principle to build, along with its Palestinian and Israeli neighbours, a four-billion-dollar pipeline from the Red Sea to refill the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea. But the world’s lowest and saltiest body of water lies below the Red Sea and the pipeline must cross higher land in order to reach it — a project that will entail a major pumping effort. A desalination plant would also be built to remove the salt and provide 200 million cubic metres of potable water to Jordan each year. “This project is worrisome. It will cause indescribable damage,” Mehyar warned. A feasibility study is being carried out by the World Bank but environmentalists fear that an influx of seawater could undermine the Dead Sea’s fragile ecosystem. The degradation of the Dead Sea began in the 1960s when Israel, Jordan and Syria began to divert water from the Jordan River — the Dead Sea’s main supplier. Over the years 95 percent of the river’s flow has been diverted by the three neighbours for agricultural and industrial use, with Israel alone diverts more than 60 percent of it, according to FoEME. The impact on the Dead Sea has been compounded by a drop in groundwater levels as rain water from surrounding mountains dissolved salt deposits that had previously plugged access to underground caverns. Industrial and tourist operations around the shores of the lake exacerbate the situation. “We ask the government to keep an open mind while examining the plan,” said Mehyar. The government acknowledges the project will be a challenge. “Six studies on the Red-Dead plan’s impact on the environment are currently being conducted,” said Fayez Batainah, who heads the project at the water ministry. “We are coordinating and cooperating with the World Bank and all concerned sides.” But Mahasneh said the authorities did not have a comprehensive strategy. “There is chaos in the country’s water polices. We do not have a real strategy and efficient water management, and the current plans did not consider what independent experts think or say,” he said. “The country for example is still cultivating crops that consume a lot of water. We should import these crops and save our water,” he said, singling out tomatos and bananas. More than 60 percent of Jordan’s annual water consumption of 900 million cubic metres goes to agriculture, which contributes 3.6 percent to gross domestic product, according to official figures. “We have water… but we suffer from massive water mismanagement,” Mehyar said.

Water – I/L – Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan facing water crisis now: failure to reform management regimes spreads tuberculosis, creates food shortages and instability.
Bukharbaeva 5 (Galima, writer, http://iwpr.net/report-news/new-uzbek-water-crisis, accessed 7/7/11) CJQ

Uzbekistan is facing a new water crisis, as a result of drought, rapid population growth and the shrinking of the Aral Sea. But despite its problems, Tashkent curiously refuses to negotiate with its neighbours, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, over sharing water resources. One of the worst hit areas of Uzbekistan is Karakalpakstan in the northwest. As a consequence of severe dought, the region received only 42 per cent of its average annual supply of water last year. This has devastated agriculture, the main sector of the local economy. Many rice and cotton plantations are said to have perished. Pastures are so withered that cattle have had to be slaughtered. Last year drought devastated around 300,000 hectares of crops in the region, directly affecting the livelihood of about 50,000 families. People were forced to drink poor quality water, which resulted in a rise in diseases such as hepatitis and tuberculosis. Vadim Antonov of the ministry of agriculture and water resources lays the blame on population growth which has increased four-fold to 25 million over the last hundred years, according to official statistics. The population is currently growing by about 500,000 a year, requiring enormous amounts of land to be turned over to agriculture, exhausting water supplies and draining the Aral Sea. Within 10 years, says Antonov, Uzbekistan won't have the water resources to meet its needs Some experts have suggested exploiting large reserves of fresh underground water in the northeast of the southern Aral Sea area. They propose building a plant to bottle the supply to provide the population with drinking water. But in the long term, it seems, the only solution will be to use supplies from outside the country. One suggestion is to revive a plan to divert Siberian rivers to Central Asia. The project was dropped several years ago after critical press reports. "Russia is prepared to revive the plan," said Antonov. "Because if we use their water, we can in turn supply people in Siberia and the Urals with fruit and vegetables, which are in short supply. Some people have never seen grapes, let alone watermelons." The project would involve the construction of a canal costing around US$16 billion, but none of the countries in the region have this sort of money. The cost could explain why high-ranking Uzbek officials prefer to ignore the water problem altogether. International organizations - the World Bank in particular - are reluctant to back such schemes too. A grant for preliminary analysis was refused. They say that Uzbekistan's problem has less to do with shortages than mismanagement of existing water resources, and that distribution systems must be reformed first.