Ammon News - JORDAN VALLEY - In the stunning landscape in Ghor Al Haditha, forbidding mountains in the east offer an incongruous backto the green farms nestling around the southern shores of the Dead Sea.

The impoverished community of this town relies on land cultivation and jobs in nearby factories. Unfortunately, many farms are no longer safe because of massive sinkholes, whose numbers have increased at a rapid pace in the area.

A factory employing nearly 70 people was forced to relocate after a sinkhole threatened its foundation, said Ibrahim, a 58-year-old shepherd who has lived here most of his life.

“Sinkholes are created because the water coming from surrounding mountains to compensate for lost water in the Dead Sea is dissolving salt underneath and creating massive cavities. We can see this in this area. It's huge and devastating,” said Abdul Rahman Sultan, vice president of Friends of the Earth environmental society.

The presence and proliferation of sinkholes, which environmentalists blame on excessive use of water resources by Israel, Jordan, Syria and even Lebanon, is changing Ghor Al Haditha’s landscape.

“The town is no longer what is used to be 10 years ago,” said Ibrahim.

“Every day we expect a new sinkhole to appear, but now we are experts and can tell which area to avoid,” he said, grazing his small herd of goats near a massive crater.

In this area alone, there are probably hundreds of sinkholes, some large enough to swallow an entire farm, which have claimed homes, animals and even people.

Local farmers said many residents had to evacuate their homes after foundations cracked when the earth crumbled.

“What we see here in this area, these sinkholes, are an environmental disaster. We see nature taking revenge for the mismanagement of water resources in the Middle East. Countries - Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel - are using the water in a way that makes less and less reach the Dead Sea,” Sultan said.

More sinkholes are appearing as the Dead Sea water level drops by more than one metre every year, he added, emphasising that the phenomenon is having a profound impact on the livelihoods of local residents.

“It is affecting people, their property. We can see houses damaged. We can see that land near us will be affected. It is an environmental and human disaster,” he said.

He blamed the four countries for what is happening and said they all have a role in the drying of the Dead Sea.

Sultan warned that the worst might be yet to come, especially in view of the projected global climate crisis.

“Climate change is affecting this area severely; it causes less precipitation in an area which already receives little rain. Water in the mountains has dropped by 50 per cent in the past years and climate change can only exacerbate the current problem, and is bound to have a bigger impact on this region,” he said, warning that sinkholes could affect the entire Dead Sea shore, including multimillion-dollar investments.

“The problem will not be confined in this area; it will have an impact on the major cities in the area and we will not be able to provide drinking water,” he added.

Officials at the Ministry of Water have said the Red-Dead Water Conveyance Project, which envisions channelling water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea, will solve the problems caused by the Dead Sea's depletion, but Sultan expressed concern about the project's potential impact on the area's ecosystem.

“The Red-Dead Canal might be good, but it is very expensive and might have an environmental impact,” he told The Jordan Times.

The water inflow would replenish the Dead Sea, estimated by Ministry of Water experts to have shrunk by nearly one-third over the past four decades.

The government said the multibillion-dollar project, which includes a feasibility study on its impact on the environment, could be the only solution to the Kingdom’s chronic water problem.

Until it is implemented, however, the residents of this farming town keep tabs on the developments around them, as the earth continues to crumble under their feet.

(By Mohammad Ben Hussein/Jordan Times)

*** A local resident points to sinkholes as his relatives’ homes appear on the southern shores of the Dead Sea on January 12, causing numerous problems for local residents who have had to flee their homes and farms (Reuters photo by Ali Jarekji )