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AMMAN, Jordan -- Despite regional tension, Jordan is seeking to revive cooperation with Israel on a project to boost the receding water level of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, officials and an Israeli diplomat said.
The surface level of the saltiest water in the world has been receding over 3 feet every year for at least the past 20 years, said Zafer Alem, secretary-general of the Jordan Valley Authority. If it continues, he said, the Dead Sea and its ecosystem will be gone in 50 years.
``The Dead Sea is a unique heritage not only to the countries that border it but to the whole world, and it's the world's responsibility to take decisive action immediately to save us from looming catastrophe,'' Alem said.
Jordan wants to resurrect a joint project with Israel to boost the water level in the Dead Sea, which lies on their borders and is also shared by Palestinians. Many projects with Israel have slowed or stalled because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
So far, Jordan has initiated informal contacts with Israel, mostly through intermediaries such as the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development -- a U.S. government body, Jordanian government officials said.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Amir Weissbrod confirmed contacts began a few months ago and said he expected both neighbors to continue cooperating on the Dead Sea.
A project to replenish the ailing basin with waters from the Red Sea has been considered since Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. But it hasn't been implemented, partly because of a lack of financing.
The plan envisions building a canal along the Jordanian-Israeli border, stretching from the Red Sea and cutting through southern desert terrain to the Dead Sea, said Jordanian water expert Elias Salameh.
The $2 billion project would exploit the 1,320-feet altitude difference between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea to desalinate sea water for parched Jordan, Salameh added, citing a 1997 World Bank study.
He said plans to supply the Dead Sea with more water date back to the late 1960s, when diversion of the Yarmouk River by Syria and Israel added to a supply problem already aggravated by evaporation. At the time, Israel suggested drawing water from the Mediterranean Sea.
But following the peace treaty, Jordan began mulling the idea of the Red-Dead Canal -- to which Israel had agreed, partly to help its Arab neighbor, which suffers from severe water shortages.
Negotiations that followed have focused on technical matters. While Israel has favored a pipeline, saying it was more cost effective -- projected to cut the cost by half, Jordan has said a canal would boost both countries shore areas, according to Salameh, who has published several books on the Dead Sea.
He said a compromise is still within reach and envisions a canal at the start of the water tract on the Red Sea, then a pipeline in the desert.
``The shoreline has, in some areas, receded for over a mile in the last 20 years and if we don't move fast, there will be no Dead Sea,'' Salameh said.
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