Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance
Based on Wikipedia: Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance
The Sea That's Dying
The Dead Sea is vanishing. Every year, its surface drops by more than a meter—roughly three feet—leaving behind a wasteland of sinkholes that swallow roads, buildings, and unwary tourists. Since the 1960s, the sea has lost a third of its surface area. What was once a vast inland body of water, famous since biblical times for its extreme saltiness and the way swimmers float effortlessly on its surface, is now shrinking into something that future generations might only read about in history books.
This isn't a natural process. Humans are killing the Dead Sea.
For decades, engineers and politicians dreamed of a massive infrastructure project that might save it: the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance, sometimes called the Two Seas Canal. The idea was audacious, expensive, and controversial. It would have pumped seawater from the Gulf of Aqaba, desalinated much of it for drinking water, and sent the leftover super-salty brine cascading down into the Dead Sea to replace what's been lost.
In June 2021, Jordan quietly abandoned the project, citing a lack of interest from Israel. The Dead Sea continues to shrink.
Why the Dead Sea Is Dying
To understand why the Dead Sea needs saving, you first need to understand what's been done to it.
The Dead Sea sits at the lowest point on Earth's surface—about 420 meters below sea level, or roughly 1,380 feet. It's not actually a sea at all but a terminal lake, meaning water flows in but has no outlet except evaporation. The Jordan River, fed by the Sea of Galilee to the north, has historically been the Dead Sea's primary water source.
Here's the problem. In 1964, Israel completed the National Water Carrier, a massive system of pipes, canals, and tunnels that diverts water from the Sea of Galilee southward to irrigate the Negev Desert and supply drinking water to cities. Jordan and Syria built their own diversions on the Jordan River's tributaries. The result? The Jordan River, which once delivered substantial flows to the Dead Sea, now barely trickles into it.
Without incoming water to replace what evaporates in the fierce desert sun, the Dead Sea began to shrink. And it hasn't stopped.
The consequences are dramatic. As water levels drop, underground freshwater aquifers along the shore suddenly find themselves exposed to voids where salt-saturated water used to provide structural support. The result is sinkholes—thousands of them—that appear without warning, some large enough to swallow cars. Hotels that once sat on the waterfront now find themselves hundreds of meters from the shore. The mineral extraction industries that pump Dead Sea water into evaporation ponds for potash and magnesium production accelerate the loss further.
The Dream of Connecting Two Seas
The idea of connecting the Dead Sea to another body of water is older than you might think.
In the mid-nineteenth century, British officers surveying the region wondered if they could build a canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. Their motivation had nothing to do with environmental restoration—they wanted a route that would bypass the French-controlled Suez Canal. What they hadn't fully grasped was the extreme elevation difference. The Mediterranean sits at sea level. The Dead Sea sits 420 meters below it. Any canal would become a catastrophic waterfall.
But that elevation difference, which ruled out a simple canal, later became an opportunity. By the late 1800s, planners realized that you could generate enormous amounts of hydroelectric power by dropping water from sea level down to the Dead Sea. One of the early visionaries for such a project was Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, who saw regional water infrastructure as essential to building a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The Red Sea option emerged in the late 1960s. Rather than bringing Mediterranean water, engineers proposed tapping the Gulf of Aqaba—the northeastern finger of the Red Sea that separates Egypt's Sinai Peninsula from the Arabian Peninsula. The route would run entirely through Jordanian territory, following the Arabah Valley northward to the Dead Sea.
How It Would Have Worked
The engineering was ambitious but not impossible.
Starting at the coastal city of Aqaba, massive pumps would lift Red Sea water 230 meters uphill—about 750 feet—through pipelines running north through the Arabah Valley. This is the hard part, the energy-intensive part. Pumping that much water uphill requires enormous amounts of electricity.
Once the water crested the divide, gravity would take over. The pipelines would carry water downward toward the Dead Sea basin. Along the way, desalination plants would strip out the salt, producing fresh drinking water for Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. The leftover brine—water even saltier than seawater—would continue flowing toward the Dead Sea.
The final drop would be spectacular. Water would plunge through penstocks—large pipes designed for hydroelectric generation—falling the remaining distance to the Dead Sea's surface. This downward rush would spin turbines, generating electricity that would offset some (though not all) of the power consumed by the pumps at the beginning of the system.
In its final configuration, the project would have required about 225 kilometers of pipelines for seawater and brine, plus another 178 kilometers of freshwater pipelines to carry desalinated water to Amman, Jordan's capital. Multiple desalination plants and at least one major hydroelectric facility would have been needed. At full capacity, the system would have produced 850 million cubic meters of freshwater annually.
That's a lot of water. For comparison, the city of Los Angeles uses about 600 million cubic meters per year.
The Politics of Water
Water in the Middle East is never just about water.
On May 9, 2005, something remarkable happened. Representatives from Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority—parties that have spent decades in conflict—gathered on the shores of the Dead Sea to sign an agreement. They weren't signing a peace treaty, but they were agreeing to study whether the Red Sea–Dead Sea project could work.
The agreement was signed by Jordanian Water Minister Raed Abu Soud, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khatib. The fact that these three officials could stand together and put their names on a shared document about regional water infrastructure was itself a diplomatic achievement.
The project became known informally as the "Peace Conduit." Proponents argued that shared water infrastructure could build trust between historic enemies. If Jordan, Israel, and Palestine all depended on the same system for drinking water and power, they would have powerful incentives to cooperate rather than fight.
This wasn't naive idealism. The project would have been located entirely on Jordanian soil—a practical choice that avoided routing pipelines through disputed territory. Jordan would manage construction and operation. Israel and international donors would help finance it. Everyone would benefit from the freshwater and from saving the Dead Sea.
The World Bank commissioned extensive feasibility studies. In June 2009, after meeting with World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Israel's Regional Cooperation Minister Silvan Shalom announced a pilot project: a 180-kilometer pipe that would pump 200 million cubic meters of water per year. Half would be desalinated for Jordan; half would go into the Dead Sea.
The Environmental Dilemma
Saving the Dead Sea by adding Red Sea water sounds straightforward. It isn't.
The Dead Sea has a unique chemical composition, the result of millions of years of evaporation concentrating specific minerals. It contains about ten times more salt than the ocean, plus unusual concentrations of magnesium, potassium, and bromide. This chemistry gives Dead Sea water its famous properties: extreme buoyancy, therapeutic effects for skin conditions, and an ecosystem unlike anywhere else on Earth.
Red Sea water has a completely different chemical makeup. Even the brine left over after desalination—which is saltier than regular seawater but still chemically distinct from Dead Sea water—could disrupt the delicate balance.
Environmental scientists identified several potential disasters. Mixing the two waters might trigger massive crystallization of gypsum, a calcium sulfate mineral that would cloud the water and coat the seafloor. The interaction could produce volatile toxic compounds. Evaporation rates might change in unpredictable ways. Bacteria and algae adapted to Dead Sea conditions could die off or be replaced by invasive species. The therapeutic properties that attract tourists might disappear.
Perhaps most dramatically, adding large volumes of less-dense water could create stratification—layers of water that don't mix. If a fresher layer formed on top, it could dilute enough to support algae blooms, turning the famously lifeless Dead Sea into something disturbingly alive. Scientists called this potential phenomenon "whitening," referring to the milky color that massive gypsum precipitation could produce.
Research commissioned by the World Bank concluded that adding up to 400 million cubic meters per year would probably maintain present conditions. Above 500 to 600 million cubic meters, stratification would likely develop. But to actually stabilize the Dead Sea's level—to stop the shrinking—more than 700 million cubic meters annually would be needed.
The numbers didn't quite work.
The Coral Reef Question
At the other end of the pipeline, another unique ecosystem faced risks.
The Gulf of Aqaba hosts some of the world's most remarkable coral reefs. While coral bleaching has devastated reefs across the tropics—victims of warming oceans driven by climate change—the corals at Aqaba have shown unusual resilience. Scientists believe they may have adapted to temperature fluctuations over thousands of years, giving them a genetic advantage against heat stress.
Pumping massive volumes of seawater from the Gulf could disrupt local currents and temperatures. The intake structures themselves might damage nearby reef systems. Any construction in the marine environment carries risks of sedimentation and pollution.
Researchers from Jordan, Israel, and international institutions studied the question carefully. Their conclusion was cautiously optimistic: the water exchanges between the Gulf and the wider Red Sea through the Strait of Tiran are so enormous that the project's withdrawals would be imperceptible except in the immediate vicinity of the intake. They recommended proceeding, provided the intake was designed and located properly.
But "proceeding properly" requires money, expertise, and sustained political will.
The Valley Between
Between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea lies the Arabah Valley—known in Arabic as Wadi Araba—a desert landscape that conceals both water and history.
Beneath the valley floor lie aquifers containing fresh groundwater, crucial for agriculture and communities in one of the driest regions on Earth. The pipeline would cross directly over these aquifers. If it ruptured—and the valley sits squarely in the Jordan Rift Valley, an active seismic zone where earthquakes are common—saltwater could contaminate irreplaceable freshwater supplies.
The valley also holds archaeological treasures. At Wadi Finan, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of the earliest known copper mining and smelting operations in the world, dating back more than 7,000 years. Construction equipment churning through the valley could destroy artifacts that haven't yet been discovered.
Project planners acknowledged these concerns. The World Bank's preferred design called for buried pipelines rather than open canals, reducing evaporation losses and humidity increases that could affect the desert ecosystem. Engineers would take special care to minimize archaeological damage. But the fundamental tension remained: any major infrastructure project through pristine desert will leave scars.
Money, Power, and Politics
The project's price tag kept growing. Early estimates suggested two billion dollars. Later assessments pushed toward ten billion. The first phase alone—before any water would actually reach the Dead Sea—was projected at 1.1 to 2.5 billion dollars.
And then there was the energy problem.
Pumping water 230 meters uphill requires enormous power. The hydroelectric generation at the end—where water drops to the Dead Sea—would recover some of that energy, but not enough. The project would be a net consumer of electricity, requiring Jordan to build additional power plants whose costs weren't included in project estimates.
Jordan's solution? Nuclear power. The kingdom planned to build a nuclear plant specifically to supply electricity for the desalination and pumping systems. This added another layer of complexity, expense, and controversy to an already complicated project.
As of January 2019, Israel had committed to contribute over a billion dollars over 25 years. International donors would provide additional financing. Commercial lenders would supply debt and equity. But the financing always seemed just out of reach, dependent on political agreements that kept shifting.
The Alternatives Nobody Wanted
There was always another option. Everyone knew it. Few wanted to discuss it seriously.
You could restore the Jordan River.
Israeli environmental organizations consistently argued that rehabilitating the river's natural flow was a better solution than building a massive pipeline from a different sea. If Israel, Jordan, and Syria reduced their diversions and allowed more water to flow downstream, the Dead Sea would stabilize naturally, without the risks of mixing incompatible waters.
But this would mean giving up water that agriculture and cities have come to depend on. In a region where water scarcity drives political tension and where populations continue to grow, asking countries to voluntarily reduce their water consumption is politically toxic.
The World Bank study dutifully analyzed the alternative of restoring the Jordan River. It also analyzed the alternative of doing nothing—letting the Dead Sea continue shrinking. Neither option generated enthusiasm from governments that wanted new water supplies, not reduced consumption.
Egyptian Objections
The project drew criticism from an unexpected quarter.
In 2005, the chairman of Egypt's Suez Canal Authority raised objections that seemed to have little to do with water or environment. He argued that the canal would increase seismic activity in the region—a dubious claim, given that the project was proposed as pipelines, not a canal, and wouldn't alter the geological fault structure. He suggested Israel would use the water to cool its nuclear reactor near Dimona—technically possible but hardly the primary purpose. He worried the project would help Israel develop settlements in the Negev Desert—a political objection dressed in technical clothing.
Egypt's concerns likely reflected broader anxiety about regional power dynamics rather than genuine technical analysis. The Suez Canal gives Egypt enormous strategic leverage in the Middle East. Any project that enhanced Israel's infrastructure or regional cooperation between Israel, Jordan, and Palestine might be seen as diminishing Egypt's relative importance.
The End
By June 2021, the project was dead.
Jordan announced its abandonment quietly, without fanfare. The official reason given was a lack of interest from Israel. Behind that terse explanation lay years of shifting priorities, political changes in all three participating governments, persistent financing challenges, and the fundamental tension between the scale of investment required and the uncertain benefits.
The Dead Sea continues to shrink. The sinkholes continue to appear. The Jordan River remains a trickle of its former self.
Some scientists have suggested that perhaps this is acceptable—that the Dead Sea basin, dramatically altered by human activity, might serve as a unique geological park demonstrating the power of human-caused environmental change. It would be a monument to our capacity to reshape the planet, for better or worse.
Others continue to hope that some version of the project might be revived. In 2023, Jordan announced plans for a more modest project—the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project—that would bring desalinated Red Sea water to Jordan's population centers without attempting to save the Dead Sea. It's a pragmatic choice, addressing immediate water needs while leaving the larger question of the Dead Sea's future unresolved.
What We Lose
The Dead Sea has been famous for millennia. Ancient Egyptians used its minerals in mummification. The biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah supposedly stood near its shores. Herod the Great built a fortress overlooking it. Cleopatra reportedly prized its cosmetic properties.
Today, tourists come to float in its waters—so salty that sinking is impossible—and to smear its mineral-rich mud on their skin. The Dead Sea Works, an Israeli company, extracts potash and other minerals worth billions of dollars. Hotels and spas cluster along what remains of the shoreline, though some now sit awkwardly far from the receding water.
If current trends continue, the Dead Sea won't disappear entirely. Evaporation rates will eventually slow as the remaining water becomes ever more concentrated, reaching an equilibrium at some smaller size. But the sea that remains won't be the Dead Sea of history and tourism. It will be something else—saltier, smaller, less accessible, surrounded by a scarred landscape of sinkholes and abandoned infrastructure.
The Two Seas Canal was humanity's most ambitious attempt to reverse this trajectory. Its failure leaves us with a smaller set of options and a growing reminder of what happens when we take more from nature than we give back.
The Dead Sea is still dying. We just decided not to save it.