Camels, palm trees, sea

James Schofield: It is the lowest place on earth - geologically unique... a mineral rich salt sea.

00.00.00.00

For millions of years, the waters of the River Jordan have drained into a basin formed by the great rift valley... where the main activity has been the action of the sun on sea.

The Dead sea is not just a sea... it's a place of extraordinary historical significance...

00.45

Ruins

...dotted with the ruins of centuries...

...like Qumran, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found... and the mountain fortress of Masada, where the Jewish zealots chose collective suicide rather than surrender to the might of Rome.

00.54

And environmentalists believe it's under threat...

01.10

Gidon Bromberg

Gidon: What we're going to see here is the destruction of the natural beauty that's there...   We have a tenth of the amount of fresh water coming down to the Dead Sea than we did at the turn of the century. The Dead Sea has changed its size over the centuries many many times. It has been lower than this today in prior centuries. However it always had a chance to rejuvenate. Today it doesn't...

About four hundred metres below sea level, the surface of the Dead Sea is some sixteen metres lower now than forty years ago.

01.46

Salt pans

As the sea retreats, it leaves unsightly salt pans.

01.55

The Dead Sea has no natural outlet... So it evaporates, slowly, in the hot, dry air, producing some of the saltiest waters in the world... ten times as salty as ordinary seawater.

02.00

Frolicking in mud

The salt's the main attraction for the tourists too... A million and a half come here every year... to places like Ein Gedi spa

02.18

Some lured by the virtual certainty of year round sunshine.

Showers

Others by the cosmetic and medicinal effects of Dead Sea mud.

02.32

Bathing

Not that the tourists seemed worried that the lowest place on earth is getting lower all the time. Most just enjoy the new experience.

02.40

Being extraordinarily salty, the water is also extremely buoyant... floating on the surface is a cinch, even for beginners.

Winding road, Hotel

Today luxury hotels built by developers in the hope of attracting a whole new clientele are mushrooming along the narrow corridor between the mountains and the sea.

03.03

Preparation

At Ein Bokek, the Hyatt Hotel is preparing for its official opening.

03.15

In a couple of weeks the Hotel opens with five hundred beds, part of a regional plan for fifty thousand...

Joseph Kruvi - General Manager

Joseph Kruvi: The Dead Sea is probably the most natural health spa in the world. We have ten percent more oxygen than elsewhere you have at sea level. In the air there are natural minerals that contribute to your health and to your de-stressing like bromine. So if we are looking for a new opportunity, I think this is it.

03.35

Gidon Bromberg

Gidon Bromberg: There is a lack of strategy for the development of the Dead Sea. There is no holistic plan. Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians have not sat together in order to plan what are the priority development issues for the Dead Sea.

03.58

Jordanians and Israelis are also doing their best to exploit its natural resources.

Dead Sea Works

Dykes

The Dead Sea Works harvests the Dead Sea water for its potassium, magnesium, calcium and salt... There's a Jordanian plant on the other side which does the same. Pumped into  a canal, the mineral-rich water is fed into a series of giant evaporation ponds from which it then returns by gravity... shedding its minerals alongside dykes.

04.28

It's a hugely lucrative business... but there's a drawback in environmental terms - half the water pumped out of the sea is lost through evaporation.

04.51

Zvi Ben-Noon, Chairman, Dead Sea Works

Zvi Ben-Noon: First of all, it's evaporating by itself, because if we will not pump it, it will be somewhere here and it will evaporate. But what we have created, we created a new sea and all the tourists, all the hotels, here and here, it's on the ponds. Because without our plant, here will be completely desert - like here - and mud. Nothing here. No tourism. Nothing.

05.02

Gidon Bromberg

Gidon Bromberg: Well that's not the whole truth. The potash companies both the Arab Potash company and the Dead Sea Works are responsible for roughly twenty five percent loss in the waters of the Dead Sea through their creation of their ponds and the extra evaporation that that causes. So they are directly responsible for the loss of the Dead Sea, for killing the Dead Sea.

05.34

Map of Jordan, Israel and Syria

But there's a bigger reason for the Dead Sea's demise...

06.02

In the sixties Israel diverted the sources of the Jordan River where they leave the Sea of Galilee...

Jordan then did the same to the Yarmuk River - a tributary. The result - the only thing flowing down the Jordan River today is salt and sewage.

By river

Ahmed Shahrawi works on a farm beside the Jordan River... there aren't too many others who do the same.

...And Ahmed can only use it by mixing the river water with water from the King Abdullah Canal.

06.26

A handful of farmers - who remember how it was - recall that in the sixties the river was much deeper than it is today - and clean enough to drink.

06.48

Farmers sitting at table

Kaled Bishtawi: Now I won't drink from it because it's too salty from the little rainfall, too much salty springs and too much diversion. But before, in the sixties, we used to drink from it but now the water's very bad and the farmers have left.

06.54

Said Bishtawi: It's the same size but the water is less and it's very dirty and salty.

Pleasure boat

It's a textbook example of neglecting the environment for short term goals...

07.22

Tourists sitting on boat

Tourists like these women who have been coming here for years have seen the Dead Sea change around them.

07.29

Tourist: The salt Islands are gone. What we have is highways that they have created of all these minerals they are extracting. You've seen that. I'm glad I took pictures many years ago, because I don't think we'll see that again. Not in our lifetime. It'll take too many years to get that back.

07.38

Caves

One place that is popular with Dead Sea tourists is a visit to the Flour Cave... it's somewhere Israeli children get taken to go on camping trips... a place to experience the wonders of the environment first hand...

08.01

It's a place of mystery, darkness... something they're not used to in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv...

Emerging from the cave, the children are in the mood for talk...

Child 1: We need a drink - but we shouldn't ruin the Dead Sea.

08.34

Child 2: I agree, because this is the lowest place on earth, so people should come here for a while but not stay here too long.

Child 3: There's got to be something special in every country and in this country it's the Dead Sea.

Child 4: I think the Dead Sea is very important, because people come here from all over the world to see it, and we should really try to do whatever we can to keep it. I'm sure that if there was a crisis, we could find other water so I think we should try to save the Dead Sea and then try to the worst we could always try to ship it in from somewhere like the States but we can't ship the Dead Sea in.

Dead Sea Works / evening

The Dead Sea may be dying, but there's a sense that things can work, if development is properly controlled... the environment is a more important priority today than in the sixties... It needs to be, if the Dead Sea is to remain a place of wonderment for future generations.

ENDS

10.15