Water Resources of Jordan

165 Pages·2018·6.676 MB·English

by  Elias Salameh, Musa Shteiwi, Marwan Al Raggad

World Water Resources
Elias Salameh
Musa Shteiwi
Marwan Al Raggad
Water
Resources
of Jordan
Political, Social and Economic
Implications of Scarce Water Resources
World Water Resources
Volume 1
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15410
Elias Salameh • Musa Shteiwi
Marwan Al Raggad
Water Resources of Jordan
Political, Social and Economic Implications
of Scarce Water Resources
Elias Salameh Musa Shteiwi
Center for Strategic Studies, Center for Strategic Studies,
University of Jordan University of Jordan
Amman, Jordan Amman, Jordan
Marwan Al Raggad
Water, Energy and Environment Center
University of Jordan
Amman, Jordan
ISSN 2509-7385 ISSN 2509-7393 (electronic)
World Water Resources
ISBN 978-3-319-77747-4 ISBN 978-3-319-77748-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77748-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937972
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Preface
One of the major challenges facing Jordan is its severe shortage of water resources.
As one of the most water poor countries in the world, water scarcity is the norm.
This scarcity in Jordan is compounded by strategy- and policy-related developments
and social factors: the most significant being the rapid rise in population. The popu-
lation of Jordan has increased tenfold since the 1950s. In addition to the high rate of
population growth, Jordan has been subjected to a series of massive refugee influxes
since 1948, most important of which are the influx of Palestinian refugees over the
past decades and the current wave of Syrian refugees with more than one million
Syrian refugees now residing in Jordan.
This book discusses the need for a regional approach to solving the problem of
water scarcity not only in Jordan but also in other countries in the region. The book
ends with some practical recommendations on how to deal with the water problem
in Jordan.
Furthermore, over the last few decades Jordan’s water resources have also been
continuously exposed to rapid degradation, not only because of active pollution
introduced by liquid or solid wastes, but also, and increasingly, by passive degrada-
tion due to salinization as a result of the over-pumping and depletion of the ground-
water resources base. Widely applied remedial measures during the last decade have
alleviated water catastrophes and the inability of the country to provide water of
sufficient quantity and quality for human life and subsistence.
This book is designed to provide an overview of the water situation in Jordan and
how it has been affected by the last few decades of rapid socioeconomic develop-
ment. For this purpose, the first chapters describe the availability of water resources
in the country.
The section on water quality provides information about the original water quali-
ties in the different regions of the country and how they have been affected by pol-
lution such as that caused by cesspools, treated and untreated waste water, industrial
waste water, solid wastes, irrigation return flows, salt water intrusions, and the
upcoming of salt water bodies.
v
vi Preface
Following this, the loss of resources, declines or losses of water production facil-
ities, and water quality degradation as a result of population growth are discussed.
Future projects to develop additional resources to substitute degraded resources and
increase water availability for the use of coming generations are put forward. The
book also touches on the issue of social cost; the cost incurred by Jordanian society
as a result of water pollution and depletion.
The book also discusses the managerial, technological, and pricing policies the
country is envisaging to achieve a sustainable water resources base taking into con-
sideration intergeneration equities in terms of quality degradation and overexploita-
tion limiting factors.
Amman, Jordan Elias Salameh
Musa Shteiwi
Marwan Al Raggad
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the many people who have helped in the preparation of
this manuscript. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation kindly provided data on water
resources, uses, and valuable information about past and current projects of the
ministry. Special thanks go to the ministry staff particularly to Eng. Thair Al-Momani
for his valuable cooperation.
We also extend our warm thanks to the administrative staff at the Center for
Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan for their continuous support throughout
the preparation of this research and manuscript over the last 6 months.
The authors are highly indebted to Dr. Ghaida Abdallat for critically reading,
commenting, and suggesting improvements to the book.
Thanks also go to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF),
Germany, and the German Research Foundation: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) served as a source of information on the results of various projects of both
institutions.
Here we gratefully acknowledge their support in our research on the develop-
ment of the water sector in Jordan.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Country Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Topography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Precipitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Evaporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Water Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Surface Water Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.1 The Jordan River Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Dead Sea Wadis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.1.3 Wadi Araba Catchments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1.4 Wadi Yutum Catchment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.1.5 Jafr Basin Catchment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.1.6 Azraq Basin Catchment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1.7 Hammad Basin Catchment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.2 Groundwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2.1 Deep Sandstone Aquifer Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.2 Upper Cretaceous Hydraulic Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2.3 Shallow Aquifers Hydraulic Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2.4 Groundwater Basins in Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.5 Thermal Mineralized Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3 Patterns of Water Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1 Water Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1.1 Domestic Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1.2 Industrial Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.1.3 Agricultural Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.1.4 Total Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
ix
x Contents
3.2 Water Balance: Resources Versus Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.2.1 Future Water Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.2.2 Domestic Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.2.3 Industrial Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2.4 Agricultural Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4 Water Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1 Natural Water Qualities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.1.1 Precipitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.1.2 Flood Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.1.3 Base Flows and Groundwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2 Natural Radioactivity in the Water Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3 Water Quality As Affected by Human Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.3.1 Pollution Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5 Waste Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.1 Introduction to Waste Water Treatment (WWT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.2 Methods of Waste Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.1 Conventional Waste Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.2 Less Conventional Methods of Waste
Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.3 Summary of Domestic Waste Water Treatment Plants . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.4 P ollutants of Emerging Concern in Water and Waste Water . . . . . . . 98
5.4.1 Upcoming Pollutants in Treated Waste Water . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.4.2 Over-exploitation, Resources Depletion
and Aquifer Salinization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.4.3 Water Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.4.4 Wasted Groundwater Resources and Their Impacts . . . . . . . 108
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6 Water Pollution Management and Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.1 M anagement and Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.2 E xamples of Degradation Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.2.1 Waste Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.2.2 Cost of Aquifer Over-Exploitation and Depletion . . . . . . . . . 116
6.2.3 Discussion on Regulation and Scarcity Price
of Water Resources and Water Quality Deterioration . . . . . . 118
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
7 Water Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.1 National Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.2 Water Policy Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.3 Water Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.3.1 Peculiarities of the Water Supply and Use System in Jordan 125