{"id":1184,"date":"2008-07-27T20:37:20","date_gmt":"2008-07-27T17:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2013-10-12T22:24:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T19:24:44","slug":"jordan-set-to-launch-huge-water-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/07\/27\/jordan-set-to-launch-huge-water-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Jordan set to launch huge water project"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"hn-articlebody\" class=\"g-unit hn-copy\">AMMAN (AFP) \u2014 Thirsty Jordan announced on Sunday that a <strong>Turkish firm<\/strong> will begin work next week on a near-billion-dollar project to supply the capital with water from an ancient southern aquifer.Water Minister Raed Abu Soud said GAMA Energy will next Sunday launch the 990-million-dollar plan to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman.<\/p>\n<p>Infrastructure work on the much-delayed project in the desert kingdom is expected to take around four years, the state-run Petra news agency quoted Abu Soud as saying.<\/p>\n<p>This will include using 250,000 tonnes of steel and digging 55 wells to pump water from Disi to Amman, where per capita daily consumption of its 2.2-million population is 160 litres (42 gallons), he said.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan&#8217;s overall population of nearly six million is growing by almost 3.5 percent annually, and it is one of the world&#8217;s 10 most water-impoverished countries, relying mainly on rainfall to meet its needs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A radical solution to Jordan&#8217;s chronic water problems is the Red-Dead Canal project, expected to provide Jordan with 500 million cubic metres (17.5 billion cubic feet) of water&#8221; annually, Abu Soud said.<\/p>\n<p>He was referring to a multi-billion dollar plan to build a massive canal to channel water from the Red Sea to the slowly evaporating Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and to construct a desalination plant.<\/p>\n<p>The demand for water is constantly rising in Jordan, which has seen an influx of around 750,000 Iraqi refugees since the US-led invasion of its eastern neighbour in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>Current water consumption is some 900 million cubic metres (31.5 billion cubic feet) per annum.<\/p>\n<p>The water ministry says Jordan, where 92 percent of the land is desert, will need 1.6 billion cubic metres (56 billion cubic feet) of water a year to meet its requirements by 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/afp.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5hpsie322mAXlkSLXw1PtkpuzSV6g\">AFP<\/span>, 27 July 2008<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMMAN (AFP) \u2014 Thirsty Jordan announced on Sunday that a Turkish firm will begin work next week on a near-billion-dollar project to supply the capital with water from an ancient southern aquifer.Water Minister Raed Abu Soud said GAMA Energy will next Sunday launch the 990-million-dollar plan to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":32532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jordan","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}