Free Republic

AMMAN — Jordan has decided to go it alone and build a two-billion-dollar pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea without help from proposed partners Israel and the Palestinian Authority, an official told AFP. "Jordan is thirsty and cannot wait any longer," said Fayez Batayneh, the country's chief representative in the mega-project to provide drinking water and begin refilling the Dead Sea, which is on course to dry out by 2050. "Israel and the Palestinians have raised no objection to Jordan starting on the first phase by itself," Batayneh said. "The first stage, at an estimated cost of...

The Dead Sea could be saved from drying up under a groundbreaking plan to flood millions of gallons of seawater in from the Red Sea more than 110 miles away. Funding has been secured for a feasibility study into the ambitious and controversial scheme to reverse falling water levels. The scheme involves a 110-mile long canal, dubbed 'Red To Dead', that would channel roughly five million tonnes of seawater each day into the Dead Sea. While schemes on a similar scale have been tried before for fresh water, this is by far the most ambitious seawater canalisation programme ever envisaged....

New boost for planned canal between Red Sea and Dead Sea · Firms commissioned to study feasibility of link· 25-year project would ease region's water shortage Ian Black, Middle East editor Wednesday June 27, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Hopes of building a canal linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea have been given a fresh boost with 11 firms commissioned to produce feasibility studies. Their work will be submitted to an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian committee looking at ways to implement the huge engineering scheme, which could take as long as 25 years to complete. As well as reviving the rapidly shrinking...

A cycling tour to sound the alarm about the deteriorating state of the Dead Sea is planned for next month, hoping to attract those concerned that the area is heading toward an ecological disaster. Cyclists will have the opportunity to ride over 260 kilometers during the January 24-26 competition known as the Tour de Dead Sea. According to the Megilot Council, which organized the event, both professionals and amateurs are invited to be a part of the event, which aims to sensitize the public to the drastic drying-out of the Dead Sea. The tour's route circles the sea and includes...

The Dead Sea is dying, with the world's saltiest water body threatened by a lack of fresh water and an increasingly tense political situation, environmentalists have warned. The bare, sun-baked landscape around the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on earth which is bordered by Israel, Jordan and the West Bank -- has since Biblical times been fed by the Jordan river's fresh water. But that has been systematically diverted for agricultural and hydroelectric projects, while an evaporation basin for farming world-famous Dead Sea minerals has lowered the water level by one metre (three feet) a year for the past...

Experts at a water conference in Jordan yesterday warned the Dead Sea may disappear in 50 years if current conditions are maintained, prompting Jordanian and Israeli officials to appeal for international assistance to save the much-revered body of water. The sea – the saltiest water in the world and the lowest point on earth – has been dropping 3.3 feet per year for at least the past 20 years, mostly because of river diversion projects by Syria and Israel, according to experts. "We appeal to water experts attending this conference to help us explain the crisis of the Dead Sea...

Jerusalem-(AP) -- The Dead Sea is dying because it's drying up. That's the assessment of Israel's Minister of the Environment, who says only a major engineering effort can save it. The Dead Sea gets its name from the salt content so high that it can't accommodate sea creatures. An Israeli TV report illustrated the shrinking shoreline. A reporter stood at the spot where 20 years ago water met land. That spot is now 2,000 feet away, across the parched landscape. The Dead Sea is so salty that people can float with no effort. It's popular for spas and treatments at...

JERUSALEM (AP) - The Dead Sea is dying, and only a major engineering effort can save it, Israel's Minister of the Environment said Monday. The Dead Sea gets its name from its heavy salt content, because no aquatic creatures can live in it. Now there's a new ``death threat'' - the Dead Sea is drying up and disappearing. An Israeli TV reporter, illustrating the government report, stood on a spot where, just 20 years ago, water met land. Now that point is 2,000 feet of parched ground away, he said, as the sea gradually recedes. Because it is landlocked in...

The Dead Sea is dying as its dark salty waters retreat (Filed: 04/10/2003) Human exploitation is forcing the surface level down by three feet each year, reports David Blair The jagged cliffs of the Judaean desert mountains, where John the Baptist wandered and Jewish fighters made their last stand at Masada, once sloped directly into the Dead Sea. Today, many of those cliffs descend into ugly mudflats covering much of the basin marking the lowest point on Earth. For the Dead Sea is in retreat as human intervention forces the water level downwards by more than three feet per year....

The Dead Sea nearly disappeared about 120,000 years ago, say researchers who drilled more than 1,500 feet below one of the deepest parts of the politically contentious body of water. The discovery looms large at a time when the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly, Middle Eastern nations are battling over water rights, and experts hotly debate whether the salt lake could ever dry up completely in the years to come. New data from drilled deposits are also helping piece together geological history that slices through Biblical times. Further research may offer opportunities to verify whether earthquakes destroyed the cities of...

"It may be too early to say, but initial evidence points towards a large-scale destruction from a catastrophic event. I say this because, in that area, the skeletal remains were traumatized by an east-to-west directional event, demonstrating that the catastrophe came from a particular compass point." –Dr. Collins snip Dr. Collins and his team began digging at a new site [last year], Tall el-Hammam, which corresponded to several factors. Dr. Collins summarized the end result: "To start with, the Tall el-Hammam site has twenty-five geographical indicators that align with the description in Genesis. Compare this with something well known—like Jerusalem—that...

A team of archaeologists working on a 10-year excavation near the Dead Sea believe they have unearthed the remains of the ancient city of Sodom, detailed in the book of Genesis. This startling discovery was not only done by using the Bible to locate the city, much of the findings confirm the Biblical account of a once-thriving, wealthy metropolis that met sudden, swift destruction as it burned to the ground from a super-powerful explosive force. The findings continue the steady stream of ancient evidence that continues to confirm the accuracy of the Holy Bible. Making The Case For Sodom’s Discovery​...

He is having a number of people, including New Mexico Tech scientists, examine the potsherd to determine what the glaze is. Material engineers at the site said it looks like Trinitite, the substance materials such as sand turn into when subjected to a nuclear blast. However, Collins said he isn't suggesting a nuclear blast hit the site. He doesn't know the cause, but suspects a comet strike or electrical event.

This is a non-political story (but a very cool one nonetheless) which I was first alerted to by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. Archaeologists who have been busily digging into a massive mound in southern Jordan for the last ten years are growing increasingly convinced that they have located the city of Sodom, famously known in the Bible for having been struck down by God due to the sinful ways of its residents. While there aren’t any postcards with “Welcome to Sodom” emblazoned in neon, the ruins are definitely the remains of a massive city-state which thrived from...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – An experienced archaeologist who has spent a decade searching for the ancient ruins of Sodom is now confident that his team has located the ill-fated biblical city and evidence of its sudden destruction. Dr. Steven Collins is a distinguished professor of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque and is also dean of the school’s College of Archaeology & Biblical History. In addition to writing dozens of scholarly books and journal articles, Collins frequently visits the Middle East, where he participates in ongoing archaeological research. Since 2005, Collins has led excavations in the southern Jordan Valley in...

The long-lost Biblical city of Sodom — a city that the Bible claims was destroyed by God because of its immorality — may finally have been found. Archaeologists have uncovered a slew of monumental structures and artifacts in a Jordan Valley mound known as Tall el-Hammam offering evidence of a city-state that is believed to have thrived during the Bronze Age when other Holy Land cities were being abandoned or were in decline. Based on the location, dates of occupation, and the remains of other ancient cities nearby, archaeologists think it's the best candidate yet for what was once Sodom....

But based on the excavated evidence, the city’s Bronze Age heyday seems to have nevertheless come to a sudden, inexplicable end toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age—and the ancient city became a relative wasteland for 700 years, for the most part void of human habitation. The comparatively paltry or lack of Late Bronze Age material is a testament to this, with the same pattern shown in the smaller, nearby sites. A strange development, thinks Collins, for a great city-state that flourished even through the catastrophic climate changes that arguably led to the collapse of the great cities of...

There would be sweet Zionist vindication were the Dead Sea rehydration project to actually be implemented with full Jordanian, Palestinian and world partnership. After all, the vision of refilling the Dead Sea, using water from the Mediterranean, was floated back in Theodor Herzl's seminal 1902 Altneuland. True, Herzl envisioned the project for generating hydroelectric power, while today's updated version of his dream would call for channeling Red Sea water for desalination purposes. Yet there's no denying that the very notion captures the imagination and raises our hopes of peaceful cooperation belying the ever-rampant regional belligerence and boldly charting the mutually...

Regeneration of the Biblical Dead Seaby Leslie J. Sacks Amid the constant turmoil and angst boiling over in Israel and the West Bank, at the center of the Middle East, lies the Dead Sea. [3] This salt-laden desert sea is rapidly diminishing in size as its source, the Jordan River, dries up: the Syrians (via the Yarmuk, a source for the Jordan), Israelis and Jordanians all draw an ever-increasing amount of water from this biblical tributary. [1] We think of the Dead Sea as a tourist haven for spa treatments and beauty products, as a relief for psoriasis sufferers;...