Responding to a question during his monthly meeting with the press, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Nasser Judeh said Minister of Water and Irrigation Raed Abu Saud informed him that "the water levels at Jordan Valley dams are not alarming compared with previous years".

Judeh added that Abu Saud assured him that the King Talal Dam currently holds 27.5 million cubic metres (mcm) of water out of its full capacity of 75mcm, and rejected as baseless news reports that the dam's storage had dropped to alarming levels.

Abu Saud confirmed that this year's water situation is manageable.

"The water storage situation has reached levels worse than this year," Abu Saud said, citing the year 2000 when water quantities in King Talal Dam dipped to 3.1mcm, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

He expected water levels in the dam in question to drop as low as 20mcm by October.

Jordan is facing serious challenges as a result of the growing demand for potable and irrigation water, the minister said, adding that the ministry is exerting extensive efforts to manage the sector effectively and transparently.

The Kingdom received less than 4.3 billion cubic metres of rainwater this year, which is just over half of the long-term annual average of 8.5 billion cubic metres of water, according to officials.

The country's major dams currently hold only 40 per cent of their total storage capacity.

By Hani Hazaimeh

© Jordan Times 2008

 

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