Dead Sea is shrinking fast
KALIA BEACH (Dead Sea): Twelve years ago swimmers used to plunge into nearly 10 metres of water from a diving platform jutting out in the Dead Sea off Kalia beach. Now, its metal support columns and flat top rear like some surreal modern sculpture straight from mud topped by a thin slick of the inland lake’s famously saline waters.
The Dead Sea is shrinking fast — disappearing at the astonishing rate of one metre a year, according to a recently published official report.
“We built this as a jetty and diving board for the tourists at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991,” says Amir Dover, the beach’s manager. “It was designed to help people avoid walking over the rocks in the shallows. Then it was about a half metre out of the water. Now look where it is. You’d do yourself a serious injury if you tried to use it.”
In November, after 10 years of research, the Israeli government published the initial findings of a report on the Dead Sea demonstrating the alarming contraction of the lowest and most salty body of water on the planet. “Why the experts needed a decade to tell us that, I don’t know,” said Dover, pointing to the jetty. “They just needed to come here to see how fast the water is receding. Youngsters were jumping off the jetty a few years ago but now it’s useless.”
Kalia beach, on the Dead Sea’s northern shoreline, has been empty of tourists since the violence of the intifada erupted in the region three years ago. Sunseekers, backpackers and those hoping the Dead Sea’s mineral-rich waters will alleviate skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis have all been frightened off.
But in the long run, the lake’s falling level may prove a far graver threat to the dozens of tourist sites along the shore.
According to the report, released without a fanfare by Israel’s environment ministry, the Dead Sea will sink by more than 100 metres over the next century. Salt concentrations, already 10 times greater than the conventional sea and allowing bathers to float almost on top of the water, will rise sharply.
The Dead Sea is some 300 metres deep at its centre, so it will not disappear entirely, says the report. Instead, the shoreline will creep inwards leaving salinity concentrations so high that it will eventually be just a thick soup of salt in the centre of the Jordan Valley.
The scientists say that already several salt-tolerant bacteria, one of the few life forms that can exist in such extreme conditions, have died out.
Environmentalists, such as Gidon Bromberg of Middle East Friends of the Earth, have little doubt where the problem originates. “Israel and Jordan have been over-extracting water from the main river supplying the Dead Sea for years and now we are paying a heavy price,” says Mr Bromberg
The Dead Sea, lying about 400 metres below sea level and separating Israel and Jordan, is fed mainly by the freshwater Jordan River. The Sea’s high salt content derives from constant evaporation due to the scorching temperatures in the Jordan Valley. For millions of years, fresh water entering the Dead Sea was balanced by the loss to evaporation, keeping the sea level steady. But over the past few decades the situation has changed, with both Israel and Jordan fighting to extract as much water as possible from the Jordan for farming, domestic and industrial use.
According to environmentalists only a tenth of the river’s waters now reach the Sea, throwing the natural balance out of kilter. They criticize both countries for wasting water: hugely subisidized water prices to Israeli farmers, for example, mean that thirsty plants like melons are widely grown. “In reality, if water was properly priced, it would just be uneconomic for us to grow melons here,” said Bromberg.
Although Israel is officially admitting the problem of the Dead Sea’s falling water levels only now, the two countries have been searching for a solution since the 1980s. One proposal, on which both have pinned a great deal of hope, involves “topping up” the Sea by pumping water either from the Red Sea via Jordan or from the Mediterranean via Israel: the Red-Dead and Med-Dead options, as they have come to be known. But the cost of such a huge engineering feat has caused the plan to be repeatedly shelved.
Jordan is pushing hard for the pipeline to be built from the Red Sea, via Aqaba, and has wooed to the World Bank into underwriting a feasibility study, according to Bromberg. It hopes to siphon off some of the water to desalination plants to supply its thirsty populations in cities like Amman.
The Israeli report backs the Jordan option, though it admits that even if work began tomorrow it would take at least 20 years for the pipeline to reach the Dead Sea.
“What concerns us is that everyone seems to be agreed on the Red-Dead solution as the ‘only’ solution. Other options, like reducing extraction from the Jordan River, are just not being considered,” said Mr Bromberg. “The environmental effects of building a giant pipeline carrying sea water over the mountain ranges of the East Bank have just not been calculated.”
Etai Gavrielli, a researcher with the Israeli Geological Survey Unit, which worked on the government report, admits that there could be other problems, too. “The biggest would be the unforeseen effect of mixing sea water with the Dead Sea, which has a unique composition. We just don’t know what that will do to the lake, biologically or chemically. It may make things even worse than they are now.”
The rapidly falling sea level is having a severe impact on a unique natural habitat, including rare wildlife and vegetation concentrated around the shoreline. But the advancing problem is beginning to endanger local populations, too, as changes in pressure caused by the falling water cause large ‘sink holes’ to open up unexpectedly around the lake.
Professor Zvi Ben-Avraham, of the Dead Sea Research Centre at Tel Aviv University, forecasts that this phenomenon will grow worse in the coming years. “We think many more sink holes will start appearing in a much more extreme form posing a severe danger to local communities. It’s a future I try not to think about too much.”
Mr Bromberg believes that the Israeli government is secretly concerned that one of the many hotels around the Dead Sea could one day disappear into a sink hole, causing many deaths and incalculable damage to the lake’s tourism industry. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.
Disparity in question papers
THE disparity between the pattern of question papers set for the candidates of the Federal Board institutions and the colleges affiliated to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Bahawalpur, and other boards in the Punjab has caused a great disappointment among the local students.
Recently, the provincial and federal education departments had issued so-called model papers for the guidance of the first-year students intending to take the annual examinations to be held in 2004. According to the students, who resorted to protest by taking out rallies, the model papers of all boards in the Punjab showed that all questions were to be answered, and that there will be no choice at all. On the other hand, the model papers issued by the Federal Board will allow its candidates an open choice in all questions. The model papers of the Federal Board and those of the provincial boards, including BISE, show a clear disparity.
On the results of the intermediate examination depends the future of the students. All of them have to compete for seats in professional colleges and universities on the basis of this examination irrespective of the board they pass from it. Hence, it is sheer injustice to allow open choice to the students of the Federal Board and deny the option to those of the Bahawalpur or any other board of the Punjab. In that case, the students of the Federal Board will have an advantage over those of the provincial boards.
The authorities concerned should remove this disparity by adopting a uniform pattern of question papers in the interest of the students.
THE Punjab government will soon launch a “Basic urban services project”, costing Rs7 billion with the Asian Development Bank’s financial share of 70 per cent in 21 tehsils, including five tehsils of Bahawalpur district, of four districts.
The project includes the provision of water supply, sewerage, link roads, a slaughter house and community development schemes. Five tehsils of Multan district, four of Khanewal and seven of DG Khan have also been included in the project.
DCO Imran Ahmed told Dawn that the Central Development Working Party has already approved this project, whose modalities were now being worked out for its implementation. According to him, tehsil-wise allocation has been earmarked as follows: Bahawalpur Rs1.56 billion, Hasilpur and Khairpur Tamewali Rs140 million each, Ahmadpur East Rs10.5 million and Yazman Rs100 million.
The Punjab government’s share in allocation will be 22 per cent while each TMA will have to contribute eight per cent.
The following is agency-wise allocation: ADB (70 per cent share) Rs5,220 million, Punjab government (20 per cent) Rs1,641 million and TMAs (eight per cent) Rs597 million. Total cost Rs74,558 million.
The recent judgment of “an eye for an eye” in the acid attack case by a local ATC judge has stirred a controversy here. The local legal circles opined that the judgment was unprecedented as none of the subordinate courts had ever handed down such a sentence to an accused before. They observed that it would be subject to the confirmation of superior courts in case the accused filed an appeal.
The public circles expressed the view that such a deterrent punishment could help curb heinous crimes.
People from the medical profession said it would not be proper to involve any doctor in the implementation of the court order. The presiding officer of ATC had said that acid drops should be poured into convict Sajjad’s eye in the presence of an authorized medical officer.
However, human rights activists have opposed any such sentence, adding that this conviction should not be carried out. They were of the view that it would be inhuman if such an order was implemented.
The religious circles opined that the court verdict was in conformity with Islamic laws and as such, they stressed, all other laws should be covered by Islamic provisions. They said the process of Islamization should be geared up in Pakistan.
THE year 2004 will be observed as a commemorative year of Amir of Bahawalpur Sir Sadiq Mohammad Khan Abbasi throughout the defunct Bahawalpur state.
A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of intellectuals, writers, journalists and elite of the city convened by Bahawalpur Central Library (formerly State Library) chief librarian Rana Javed Iqbal.
The participants, including Sahibzada Qamaruz Zaman Abbasi, Majeed Gill and Amjad Qureshi, commended the services of the late Nawab for the cause of Islam and Pakistan, with which he had announced the annexation of Bahawalpur state on the appeal of the Quaid-i-Azam.
The meeting decided that during 2004, seminars and exhibitions of the books written on the Nawab of Bahawalpur, postal stamps of the defunct state and rare pictures of the Nawab would be organized at the Central Library. The meeting recommended to the prime minister and the Punjab chief minister to declare the year 2004 as a commemorative year throughout the country in recognition of the services of the Amir of Bahawalpur for the cause of Pakistan.
A function of intellectuals and writers was held under the auspices of the Majlis-i-Saqafat-i-Pakistan, Bahawalpur, at the residence of Syed Tabish Alwari, a former parliamentarian, to mark the debacle of East Pakistan.
Speakers were of the view that it was the result of army rule plus the hypocrisy of the politicians.
The gathering while expressing its grief over the disintegration of the Quaid-i-Azam’s Pakistan vowed to keep the remaining country intact. The meeting, through a unanimous resolution, demanded that the rulers should constitute a commission to ascertain the causes and consequences of the debacle.