Greens vs the Seas Canal
Haaretz
08.1.07 | 13:47 By Tzipi Iser-Itzik
How do you advance a project as complicated and grandiose, as expensive and
intricate, as building a canal between two seas? It's an issue that keeps
popping up in the public debate and then disappearing again because it's so
terrifically unfeasible .
First of all give it a name that can't be resisted, like "Peace Conduit". Once
it's become synonymous in international circles with regional amity, who the
hell cares if it's economically and environmentally feasible?
Yet so many formulas for peace have come and gone in the annals of history that
caution is warranted. Before starting any project, let alone one on which peace
in the Middle East is supposed to depend, one should check in advance if it's
sustainable.
Building a canal between the Red Sea and the Dead one, while blithely ignoring
the tremendous potential damage it could wreak on the water sources and ecology
of the Bay of Eilat and the Arava, could prove to be an incompetence that will
bear an enormous cost.
If risks are not evaluated ahead of time, we may find ourselves in a dreadful
situation whose solution is bad.
How? The canal is supposed to save the Dead Sea from drying up once and for all,
by pumping 1.5 billion cubic meters of water a year, which is 3 times the amount
of water transported through the National Conduit, from the Red Sea.
Is it even possible?
The Arava valley has aquifers of sweet and brackish water, that serve for
drinking and agriculture. Leaks of briny water from the canal could salinate
the water sources. Is this not a risk that should be addressed in advance?
There are plenty of other examples.
How will pumping hundreds of cubic meters of seawater affect Eilat's ecology?
The project calls for hundreds of "fish cages", for farmed fish, to be built
along the canal. These could poison the regional water supply through leaks.
The plan calls for a desalination plant to be erected, using water that drops
from the heights to 400 meters below sea level (which is how low the Dead Sea
is). But from there, the water has to be propelled 800 meters upward: how will
this effect the environment?
The seas in question sit right smack in the crack of the Great Rift Valley, that
splits the earth from southern Africa up to Syria. The entire area is prone to
earthquakes. A bad quake could badly damage the infrastructure, leaving to
potentially grave environmental damage if the canal is ruined; this too
warrants examination in advance.
Perhaps for a change, given the vastness of the project, we should replace the
empty slogans with actual thought about how to create a project sustainable for
generations.
The author is the executive director of the Israel Union for Environmental
Defense, known locally as Adam, Teva V'Din.
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