Jordan River Baptisms Are Health Risk

KASR AL-YAHUD, West Bank (May 3) -- Standing on the Jordanian bank of the Jordan River right where many believe Jesus was baptized, Mikhail Mikhayev, a Russian tourist, enters the brownish water wearing a long white robe. He takes a deep breath and plunges his entire head and body under the water. He stands up, crosses himself, and repeats the dunking and crossing twice more.

Mikhayev may have had a spiritual experience, but it wasn't a healthy one. Standing on the Israeli-controlled side of the site, Gidon Bromberg, of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), talks about the dangers.

"If you drink the water, you're likely to get diarrhea or stomach problems, and if you have a cut, you will probably get a rash," he told AOL News. "Israel bans people from being baptized here, and the Jordanians advise against it, but it's still hard to stop people."

Bromberg says that many people save the robes they are baptized in here and choose to be buried in them.

Those relics may become all the more poignant, for the Jordan River, important to all three monotheistic religions, is drying up. In the 1930s, there were 1.3 billion cubic meters of water flowing down the Jordan River each year. Now, according to FoEME, just 20 million to 30 million cubic meters complete the trip to the Dead Sea, because Israel, Syria and Jordan divert 98 percent of the river water for their own uses. And what little does flow is highly polluted.

About 65 miles north of Kasr al-Yahud is Yardenit, the official Israeli site for baptism, where the Jordan River exits from the Sea of Galilee. Here the water is relatively clean. But just a few miles downriver at the Alumot Dam, raw sewage spills into the river, and the stench is overpowering.

FoEME today issued two studies on the damage that has been done to the Jordan River, which runs from the Sea of Galilee in Israel's north to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and on what must be done to rehabilitate its lower reaches.

"We have lost at least 50 percent of the biodiversity in and around the river due to the near total diversion of fresh water. Some 400 million cubic meters of water annually are urgently needed to bring the river back to life," said Munqeth Mehyar, the Jordanian director of FoEME.

That sounds like an enormous amount of water and an expensive proposition. But a companion study also released today shows how Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank could together save over a billion cubic meters of water using better conservation, at prices cheaper than desalination.

"In the middle of the desert we continue to flush our toilets with fresh water rather than using gray water (water that has been used for washing dishes or showering), and we continue to grow tropical fruits for export," Bromberg told AOL. "We can do much better in reducing water loss, and we need to treat and reuse all of the sewage water that we produce."

Israel has already begun using treated sewage water in agriculture. In the West Bank, however, there is not a single sewage treatment facility.

Bromberg says that rehabilitating the Jordan River would also help stabilize the Dead Sea, which is shrinking ever year. The World Bank recently commissioned a feasibility study on the Red-Dead canal, a multi-billion-dollar project that would carry water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. Bromberg says that simple conservation measures, such as covering Israel's water reservoirs with plastic during the summer to limit evaporation and replacing some of the old pipes in the national water grid, could save vast amounts of water.

The Sea of Galilee, one of Israel's primary water sources, is also at the lowest level in years. Although Israel has experienced average rainfall this year, that follows five years of drought, and the Sea is nearing the black line where pumping water will no longer be possible, as the equipment will be too far above the water line, and the sea will sustain irreparable ecological damage. Based on past Israeli policies, it is likely that any water saved through conservation will go to the Sea of Galilee rather than the Jordan River itself.