Jordan River S. Of Galilee Reduced To "Sewage, Fish Pond Water, Agricultural Runoff" - AFP

[hatrack]

The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said on Monday.
The famed river "has been reduced to a trickle south of the Sea of Galilee, devastated by overexploitation, pollution and lack of regional management," Friends of the Earth, Middle East (FoEME) said in a report.

More than 98 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by Israel, Syria and Jordan over the years. "The remaining flow consists primarily of sewage, fish pond water, agricultural run-off and saline water," the environmentalists from Israel, Jordan and the West Bank said in the report to be presented in Amman on Monday. "Without concrete action, the LJR (lower Jordan River) is expected to run dry at the end of 2011."

The river -- which runs 217 kilometres (135 miles) from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea -- and its tributaries are shared by Israel, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank. In 1847, a US naval officer who led an expedition along the river described navigating down cascading rapids and waterfalls. Today the Jordan is a brackish stream barely a few metres (yards) wide.

A couple of kilometres south of the Sea of Galilee -- which is actually a lake -- a dam cuts off the flow of the river. Just south of the dam, raw sewage gushes from a pipe.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Jordan_River_could_die_by_2011_report_999.html

[jdlh8894]

1. Maybe there is a reason for that dam

It wasn't called the Dead Sea if it could sustain LIFE.