| Okay. What am I missing here? |
 The Dead Sea is dying, with the world's saltiest water body threatened by a lack of fresh water and an increasingly tense political situation, environmentalists have warned. The bare, sun-baked landscape around the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on earth which is bordered by Israel, Jordan and the West Bank -- has since Biblical times been fed by the Jordan river's fresh water. But that has been systematically diverted for agricultural and hydroelectric projects, while an evaporation basin for farming world-famous Dead Sea minerals has lowered the water level by one metre (three feet) a year for the past two decades.
| That's 60 feet. How deep is the Dead Sea? |
Now, warns Gideon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Israel, the whole area is headed for ecological disaster unless serious measures are taken. "The ecological situation is catastrophic. In 50 years, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area and its water level is continuing to drop rapidly. For the time being nothing concrete has been undertaken," Bromberg told AFP, adding that the Dead Sea has lost 98 percent of the fresh water it previously had from the Jordan River which today has become "a drain". |