According to Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry, the Dead Sea—the lowest place on Earth—is receding at a rate of four feet per year. Its 30-mile length is only half of what it was a century ago. Similarly, the Sea of Galilee—where biblical legend has it Jesus walked on water—could use a modern miracle. It is Israel’s largest lake, and has long served as the country’s main source of freshwater. But today barely any water is released; its salinity is the highest it has been in 50 years and rising.
Read more about Dead Sea crisis
These bodies of water are not only biblical sites, sacred to billions of people around the world. They are also crucial to the survival of the people who live here. These lakes and rivers formed the cradle of civilization since long before even Cleopatra bathed in the Dead Sea for its reputed health benefits. Many worry what could happen to this already volatile part of the world if its water sources continue to shrink.
The Slow Death of Dead Sea – Whose Fault?
Israel shares these interconnected bodies of water with three less-than-friendly neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Reversing the damage done will require the cooperation of nations who have failed to work together for the past century. In fact, water shortages in Syria were one factor behind that country’s civil war.
The drinking water situation is similarly fraught. Until recently, the Sea of Galilee was the main source of freshwater in Israel. The lake’s water level is now at a historical low point that it wouldn’t be hard to walk on water.
Israel respond to the shrinking water supply by building five desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast that use reverse osmosis to make seawater potable. Now 70 percent of Israel’s tap water comes from desalination plants.
Water Desalination Plant in Israel
This supposed solution brings its own health risks, though. Researchers recently found that drinking desalinated water could lead to increased risk of heart disease, perhaps due to a lack of essential minerals. Still, Israel’s Water Authority plans to double the number of plants by 2030.
According to a research published in September in the journal Science of the Total Environment, agricultural overuse is the primary cause of the Sea of Galilee’s depletion. “On the one hand, Israel has done miracles in terms of irrigation, water distribution, and making the desert bloom,” says Jonathan Laronne, a geomorphologist at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and co-author of the paper. “Yet it has failed to take responsibility for preserving water.” The farming industry’s political power is a driving force behind Israeli water policy, he says. “The decisions made regarding water use are only rational on the basis of an agriculturally driven agenda.”
Jordan and Syria also divert water from the Upper Jordan River, reducing flow to the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Michael Wine, a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Ben-Gurion University who co-authored the report, says the reason why government officials blame climate change and drought: “It’s very convenient, because the water managers are not in control of climate.”
According to Israel’s Tourism Ministry, the Dead Sea is the country’s third most popular attraction, visited by 1.7 million tourists in 2017. But thousands of sinkholes have already swallowed up infrastructure around the lake, and if current trends continue, the Dead Sea will become inaccessible.
Facilities from the closed Lido Hotel in Israel. Lido is forced to closed down due to Dead Sea sinkholes.
Environmentalists insist that 40 percent of the Dead Sea’s depletion can be traced to the region’s mining industry, which pumps out the water to extract minerals from it. These include potash, which is used as an agricultural fertilizer; magnesium, exported as metal for uses such as the auto industry; and bromide, which is often used in pesticides.
Two private companies mine the Dead Sea for its valuable minerals: The Arab Potash Company operates on the Jordanian side of the southern Dead Sea, and Dead Sea Works operates on the Israeli side. The companies pump water from the deep northern end of the lake to the shallow southern end, where they use evaporation pools to isolate the minerals.
According to government report, the extraction of Dead Sea minerals causes a net loss of more than 84 billion gallons of water a year. That’s comparable to 40 percent of all domestic water use in the country in 2016.
While government officials blame climate change and 15 years of record-breaking drought, environmentalists and scientists say the damage is mostly human-caused, largely from government negligence. Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East says, referring to the Dead Sea: “This isn’t global climate change. This is government-licensed exploitation of our most valuable resource.”
Arab Potash company on the Dead Sea shore
Slow progress
Despite the disagreements, some positive steps are carried out in all three bodies of water. With Dead Sea Works’ contract set to expire in 2030, the government has started discussing a new deal that would require the industry to pay for the water it uses and change the term “exploit” in its contract to “sustainably develop.” The construction of sewage plants in Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories have reduced waste flowing into the Jordan River.
