The sea, which straddles the border between Israel and Jordan, has seen its surface area shrink by about 33 percent since the 1960s. A plan to replenish the Dead Sea with seawater from the Red Sea was proposed in 2009, but abandoned in 2021.
Source imagery: Maxar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea
In October 2009, the Jordanians accelerated plans to extract around 300 million cubic metres (11 billion cubic feet) of water per year from the Red Sea, desalinate it for use as fresh water and send the waste water to the Dead Sea by tunnel, despite concerns about inadequate time to assess the potential environmental impact. According to Jordan's minister for water, General Maysoun Zu'bi, this project could be considered as the first phase of the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance.[79]
In December 2013, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement for laying a water pipeline to link the Red Sea with the Dead Sea. The pipeline would be 180 km (110 mi) long and is estimated to take up to five years to complete.[80] In January 2015 it was reported that the level of water was dropping by 1 m (3.3 ft) a year.[81]
On 27 November 2016, the Jordanian government shortlisted five consortia to implement the project. Jordan's ministry of Water and Irrigation said that the $100 million first phase of the project would begin construction in the first quarter of 2018, and would be completed by 2021.[11] The project was officially abandoned in June 2021, having never broken ground.[82]
So if they aren't going to put brine into the Dead Sea, are they going to desalinate at all? I mean, I'm assuming that that part of the world could benefit from more desalination.
kagis
It sounds like originally, the hope was that all the governments in the region could collaborate on a really big desalination plant, and that Jordan basically gave up and settled for a smaller one that just Jordan is using. However, the new plant will still pump waste brine into the Dead Sea. I don't know whether the output will be sufficient to keep the Dead Sea from continuing to evaporate away, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Desalination_Plant
The Kingdom of Jordan, with a population of 10 million people, is one of the world's most water-stressed countries. As of September 2021, the country needed approximately 1,300,000,000 litres (1,300,000 m3) of potable water annually. However, at that time only 850,000,000–900,000,000 litres (850,000–900,000 m3) was available. The shortage was attributed to poor rains, climate change, a ballooning population and a high refugee influx.[3]
To mitigate its water shortfall, the Jordanian government opened a desalination plant in 2017. The plant is referred to as the Aqaba Desalination Plant. The facility produces 5,000,000 cubic metres (5.0×109 L) of potable water annually, that is distributed to homes, industry and agriculture in the Aqaba area. At that time a bigger project, the Red Sea to Dead Sea Water Canal (RSDSWC), a collaborative effort between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority was in the plans.[5]
In June 2021, after years of delay and lack of commitment from the other stakeholders, the Jordanian government abandoned the RSDSWC project and focused on this desalination plant project. Essentially, sea water will be extracted from the Red Sea and conveyed via intake pipelines to a desalination plant in Aqaba. The purified water will be pumped via pipeline to Amman and points north. The effluent brine will also be piped north via discharge pipeline and deposited into the Dead Sea, whose levels have been falling in recent years.[6]