U.S. Water News Online
SEATTLE -- A Turkish firm has won the bid to draw water from beneath Jordan's desert to meet the needs of an increasingly thirsty capital, the minister of water and irrigation said.
Mohammed al-Shatnawi said the Ankara-based company, GAMA, submitted the best bid among several Jordanian and other international firms competing for a build, operate and transfer project to extract water from southeast Jordan's al-Disi aquifer.
The US$872 million al-Disi Water Conveyance Project will provide the water-deprived Jordanian capital of Amman with 100 million cubic meters a year for the next century, al-Shatnawi told reporters.
The project will be jointly financed by the company, which will provide $175 million and the government, which will offer US$200 million. The rest will be funded with loans, the minister said, adding that work would begin in early 2008.
The arid desert kingdom faces an acute water shortage because of a harsh regional drought and depends heavily on scarce rainfall for its drinking and agricultural needs.
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