Bottles of Muddy Water
I have visited the towns and irrigators along the Darling and Murray Rivers. So much water is taken out by the great cotton farms of South East Queensland that parts of the Rivers are dying. Government regulations enforce leaving some environmental flow to just keep them alive.
It is the same with the River Jordan. The last time I was there with a film crew, we could no longer “hear the mighty Jordan roll”. It was no more than a polluted creek. Any of those million little bottles of water from the Jordan taken home by tourists, must have a third of them silt to be genuine.
Now the lower portion of the Jordan River is so polluted that the World Monuments Fund (WMF) has designated it an Endangered Cultural Heritage Site. The WMF, the leading international body for the protection of monuments, placed the revered river on its watch list of 100 endangered sites in June. About 90 percent of the river’s natural water flow has been diverted by Israel, Jordan, and Syria for domestic and agricultural use, with sewage flowing in its place. Few Christians are baptized these days near the site where archaeologists believe Jesus was baptized.
The upper Jordan, which is formed from three tributaries originating in Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and Israel, is considered clean and flows into the Sea of Galilee.
The lower Jordan River, meandering some 125 miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, is highly polluted with sewage and agricultural runoff. You can smell it long before you reach it. Christian evangelicals have teamed up with environmentalists to fight pollution and try and save the Jordan River. Unless we do, the next Middle East War might be fought over water. Many analysts predict that scarce water resources will be one-core factors at the heart of conflict in the region. Palestinians complain that Israel diverts up to 80% of water from shared underground aquifers for its own use – including that of Jewish settlers.
The river is also heavily polluted and now contains 20% untreated sewage. The 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty obliges both governments to protect the Jordan “against any pollution, contamination or harm”. The river is already running dry in some areas and it could dry out completely within two years. The pollution in the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea, which itself is under threat and has shrunk by 30%.
REV THE HON DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C.