Jordan Times
Sunday, October 18, 1998
Government floats $700m Disi water project
By Ghadeer Taher and Ahmad Khatib
AMMAN — Jordan will solicit international firms by year end to
pre-qualify for a $700 million project on a build operate and transfer (BOT) basis to draw
water from the Disi aquifer and pump it to Amman.
Water Minister Hani Mulki, painting a bleak picture of the state of the country's water
resources, told 51 firms attending an orientation seminar Saturday that the Kingdom is
seeking to appoint a “consortium to finance, construct and manage the Disi project in
a joint venture arrangement with a Jordanian public shareholding company.”
According to a timetable proposed by the ministry, the tendering process should be
completed by 1999 and construction could begin by the year 2000.
The Disi-Amman conveyance system, with a project life of 50 years will be transferred to
the government after 20 years. It will entail drilling wells, building a pumping station
and a 325-kilometre water pipeline from Disi in the south of the country that will deliver
100 million cubic metres (mcm) a year to the capital by the year 2005.
A recent government report issued in July said Jordan will run out of freshwater resources
by that time, and there will be no more confirmed water resources within the country's
borders to develop.
“The project is feasible in terms of our water needs but high in terms of cost,”
the ministry's Secretary General Koussai Quteishat told local and foreign companies.
“Facts are simple and sad: the next major project (Disi-Amman) for provision of water
supply is likely to be more expensive.”
The Water Authority today sells the precious resource to Jordanians at a subsidised rate.
The average cost of a cubic metre is JD 0.84; it is sold to consumers at nearly half that
amount, JD 0.45.
But Jordan, with its rapid population growth rate of 3.5 per cent, and rising demand for
water, both for domestic and industrial use, has very little choice.
“Despite the huge investment in the water sector, a considerable water deficit will
still be facing Jordan,” said Mulki. He said the country's water deficit is projected
to grow to 250 mcm by the year 2010 from 220 mcm in 1995.
According to Mulki, who also holds the energy portfolio in the government, current
deficits are being covered through the “mining” of groundwater resources, some
non-renewable, at over 200 per cent of their safe yields.
But for the government, the fossil waters of the Disi aquifer could be the best course
considering that desalination of brackish water could raise the cost of freshwater
production by as much as three fold — an unattractive alternative for a debt-burdened
country with few natural resources.
Using a slide projector and a multitude of charts and studies, the ministry's Assistant
Secretary General Hazim Nasser, tried to convince the participants of the well-attended
seminar of the proposed project's feasibility.
“All our studies indicate that this project is feasible,” said Nasser. “We
will be looking at a crisis in Amman within the next 10 years if we do not tap additional
water resources.”
While the bottom line will be which of the bidders provides the lowest price per cubic
metre of water, the ministry will also look at another criteria, the highest “value
added” for the country, i.e., how much of the $700 million investment will be spent
locally.
The ministry will also look favourably at foreign companies who team up with a proposed
local national water company, an idea that was not enthusiastically embraced by some
participants, who say this should be an option but not a condition.
The capital, where almost half of the country's 4.5 million population lives, has had to
bear a water rationing programme almost every summer for the last 10 years.
Already around 50 mcm from the Disi water is being used for agriculture by four privately
owned farms free of charge under a 25-year concession agreement granted by the government
in 1985. Another 14 mcm is extracted from the aquifer, which underlies 80 per cent of
Saudi Arabia's territories and 90 per cent of Jordan's, for domestic use for the port city
of Aqaba.
According to water experts, the aquifer is already over exploited with an annual drop of
80-85 centimetres in the groundwater level, which is considered “very
dangerous.” These experts, worried about over exploitation and pollution of the
non-renewable aquifer, stress that agricultural use in the area must stop.
Of the total 900 mcm used annually, agriculture consumes the lion's share of the resources
using between 600-700 mcm annually, while 240 mcm go to domestic use and 30-35 for
industry.