Israeli reduces Jordan shares of waters

A Jordanian official has stated that the implementation of al-Wahda dam project between Jordan and Syria will start by the beginning of next year by qualified companies.

The secretary general of Jordan valley authority Muhammad Zafer al-Alem said in statements on Saturday that there are contacts between the Jordanian side and the Syrian side to complete this strategic project, according to a set program and after signing the financing of the project at a sum of 82 million Jordanian dinars by the Arab Fund.

Al-Alem described this project as being among the joint Arab projects and aims at building a dam at 100 meters height and a storage capacity of 225 million cubic meters of floods waters to be used in irrigation in Jordan valley and housing use in Amman and al-Zarqa.

He said that al-Wahda dam project will be of great interests as its water will irrigate 47,000 dunnums of the lands of the Jordan valley and will provide Amman and al-Zarqa with 50 million cubic meters and generate electricity at an average of 18800 megawatt/ hour, annually.

The secretary of the Jordan valley authority estimated the period of time necessary for completing the dam at 40 months.

Meantime, the Jordanian weekly al-Ahali said that Israel has started to reduce Jordan's water shares agreed upon at Wadi Araba treaty by 100,000 cubic meters of waters daily.

The paper explained that the Israeli measure resulted in a new crisis created by Israel since the last week of last month when it has started to reduce water amounts from Tibries, noting that even without this Israeli reduction Jordan suffers a reduction in the dams storage and a decline at the level of irrigation waters in King Abdullah King channel.