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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| The Middle East Runs out of Water |
| 2015-05-09 |
| Great article by Daniel Pipes. I put this article in WoT background, as this water crisis will affect goings on in the ME in war, politics, and population movements. As a born, raised, and practicing Pisces, I have always been interested in water, resources, uses, and water policy. With the ignorant, careless, and even malicious water policies of many ME countries, with very few exceptions, lack of water may overshadow the sport of jihad, and create wars to the death over limited water. A ranking Iranian political figure, Issa Kalantari, recently warned that past mistakes leave Iran with water supplies so insufficient that up to 70 percent, or 55 million out of 78 million Iranians, would be forced to abandon their native country for parts unknown. Many facts buttress Kalantari's apocalyptic prediction: Once lauded in poetry, Lake Urmia, the Middle East's largest lake, has lost 95 percent of its water since 1996, going from 31 billion cubic meters to 1.5 billion. What the Seine is to Paris, the Zayanderud was to Isfahan – except the latter went bone-dry in 2010. Over two-thirds of Iran's cities and towns are "on the verge of a water crisis" that could result in drinking water shortages; already, thousands of villages depend on water tankers. Unprecedented dust storms disrupt economic activity and damage health. Nor are Iranians alone in peril; many others in the arid Middle East may also be forced into unwanted, penurious, desperate exile. With a unique, magnificent exception, much of the Middle East is running out of water due to such maladies as population growth, short-sighted dictators, distorted economic incentives, and infrastructure-destroying warfare. Some specifics: Egypt: Rising sea levels threaten not only to submerge the country's coastal cities (including Alexandria, population 4 million) but also to contaminate the Nile Delta aquifer, one of the world's largest groundwater reservoirs. The Ethiopian government finally woke to the hydraulic potential of the Blue Nile that originates in its country and is building massive dams that may severely reduce the flow of river water reaching Egypt (and Sudan). That will get the attention of the Egyptians. Gaza: In what's called a "hydrological nightmare," seawater intrusion and the leakage of sewage has made 95 percent of the coastal aquifer unfit for human consumption. Coupled with the double whammy of mining sewage pond sand berms and having sewage flash floods. Yemen: Oil remittances permit Yemenis to indulge more heavily than ever before in chewing qat, a leaf whose bushes absorb far more water than the food plants they replaced. Drinking water "is down to less than one quart per person per day" in many mountainous areas, reports water specialist Gerhard Lichtenthaeler. Specialist Ilan Wulfsohn writes that Sana'a "may become the first capital city in the world to run out of water." Syria: The Syrian government wasted $15 billion on failed irrigation projects in 1988-2000. Between 2002 and 2008, nearly all the 420,000 illegal wells went dry, total water resources dropped by half, as did grain output, causing 250,000 farmers to abandon their land. By 2009, water problems had cost more than 800,000 jobs. By 2010, in the hinterland of Raqqa, now the Islamic State's capital, the New York Times reports, "Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off." Iraq: Experts foresee the Euphrates River's waters soon halved (refer to Revelations 16:12 for those implications). Already in 2011, the Mosul Dam, Iraq's largest, shut down entirely due to insufficient flow. Sea water from the Persian Gulf has pushed up the Shatt al-Arab; the resulting briny water has destroyed fisheries, livestock, and crops. In northern Iraq, water shortages have led to the abandonment of villages, some now buried in sand, and a 95 percent decrease in barley and wheat farming. Date palms have diminished from 33 million to 9 million. Saddam Hussein drained the marshes of southern Iraq, at once destroying a wildlife ecology and depriving the Marsh Arabs of their livelihood. Persian Gulf: Vast desalination efforts, ironically, have increased the salinity level of gulf sea water from 32,000 to 47,000 parts per million, threatening fauna and marine life. Nearby Pakistan may be "a water-starved country" by 2022. Israel provides the sole exception to this regional tale of woe. It too, as recently as the 1990s, suffered water shortages; but now, thanks to a combination of conservation, recycling, innovative agricultural techniques, and high-tech desalination, the country is awash in H2O (Israel's Water Authority: "We have all the water we need"). I find particularly striking that Israel can desalinate about 17 liters of water for one U.S. penny; and that it recycles about five times more water than does second-ranked Spain. In other words, the looming drought-driven upheaval of populations – probably the very worst of the region's many profound problems – can be solved, with brainpower and political maturity. Desperate neighbors might think about ending their futile state of war with the world's hydraulic superpower and instead learn from it. But they won't for a while yet, if they ever do. |
| Posted by:Alaska Paul |
| #7 I will sell them my spit |
| Posted by: chris 2015-05-09 23:06 |
| #6 A retired civil engineer specializing in waste water used to tell me,"The solution to pollution is dilution." |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2015-05-09 20:21 |
| #5 Not to belittle the sand peoples' water problem but this is BS of the scale of blaming man for Global Persian Gulf: Vast desalination efforts, ironically, have increased the salinity level of gulf sea water from 32,000 to 47,000 parts per million, threatening fauna and marine life. The PG is a very warm, shallow sea with little fresh water inflow and limited exchange with the Arabian Sea. A similar, though not as extreme, example is the Eastern Mediterranean which can reach 40,000 PPM salinity in the summer. |
| Posted by: Eohippus Thigum6400 2015-05-09 17:32 |
| #4 I read about Israeli desalination progress, too, silentbrick. It is amazing. If the ME states could work with Israel, they would make the desert bloom, but their time honored tradition of blaming all their troubles on the Jews will accelerate their trip down the drain. 3dc and I did some rough calculations a few years ago about taking Med water, running down toward the Dead Sea, and generating electricity for reverse osmosis desalination, and sharing the benefits with Jordan. We figured that we would do enough to make enough flow, coupled with briny reject water to slowly fill the Dead Sea and make up for annual evaporation to fill the sea to appropriate natural levels in a long horizon. I know Israel has been looking at it for years, but political situation for it is not good. Ye Olde River Jordan flow is not enough now to replenish the sea, as the river is being over drawn by users upstream. It is also notable that the Persian Gulf is being made more saline due to heavy reverse osmosis (RO) water process plants. 36000 to 47000 ppm is a significant rise. I know that EPA is concerned about the rise of salinity. It seems to me that in California, the briny reject water could be transported in HDPE pipe outfall lines along the continental shelf 12 km or less and sent to deep water for mixing by ocean currents. In the case of the Persian Gulf, there is limited water flow through. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2015-05-09 15:30 |
| #3 I did a report on Israel's newer desalination plants. Some really neat stuff there. It's not super cheap but it's a big step forward and an important one for them. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2015-05-09 14:39 |
| #2 lack of water may overshadow the sport of jihad, and create wars to the death over limited water Still using rhetoric of Jihad, though---that's the beauty of Islam. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-05-09 13:59 |
| #1 Whoops.....I should have highlighted the first paragraph in yellow. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2015-05-09 12:58 |