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A Crazy Idea [1]

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Date: 2023-10-19  

Like most humans, I am saddened, frustrated, and heartbroken about the latest spasm of war and violence in the “Holy Land.” The whole situation is so intractable. It doesn’t seem like a problem that can be solved, certainly not with the systems, tools, cultures and leaders we have.

To at least some degree part of the problem is that there just isn’t enough water and arable land to go around. I’m an engineer (though the following is well out of my zone) so I try to think of practical solutions to problems.

Pull up Google Earth and take a look at the Israel/Palestine/Sinai Desert region. There is a lot of empty space in the Sinai Desert. You can get lost there for 40 years sometimes. Look to the left, there’s a river not that far away, called the Nile. It is not a huge river compared to the Amazon, the Mississippi, or the Columbia, but its pretty big. Per Wikipedia it has at least 50 times the annual flow of the Jordan, which is the life blood of Israel, etc.

So my modest proposal is to divert a couple percent of the Nile’s Flow, taken at the last dam below Cairo, or just above the highest reach of salt water (with a safety factor for sea level rise), and pipe it across the Suez Canal and over into the drainage which ends at Arish, a town on the Mediterranean Sea about 45 kM SE of the Gaza border, in a huge flat valley. On the photo above, see the little triangle of land sticking out into the sea to the right of the Nile Delta/Suez canal? Arish is about half again that far to the right.

Sure, there’s lots of reasons not to do this. There would be environmental effects both in the Nile Delta (though I would think a few percent change in annual flow would not be huge, certainly less than typical year to year variances, and trivial compared to the effects of the Aswan dam. There would be a huge effect on part of the Sinai, but that’s the point. It would be be expensive, both in construction cost and in energy. But, hey, wars and stuff cost a lot too, and with wind and solar and batteries the pumps could run pretty cheaply. Maybe water could be diverted to/from the near side of the delta, cutting the miles of pipe considerably.

It would take, by my back of envelope calculations, about 100 cubic meters per second to duplicate the annual flow of the Jordan. That could go in a single 6 or 8 meter diameter pipe. The distance is comparable to the distance from the Colorado River to Phoenix, the flow less than the historic flow to the Imperial Valley in California, so a big but feasible project. I don’t know about such things, but maybe the pipe could even be undersea in the Mediterranean, though overland might make some opportunities for reservoirs in between to average out flows. If two reservoirs of differing elevations were built, pumped water energy storage could take the place of the batteries. And provide some security/flexibility regarding sabotage or other damage to the pipes.

There have been items in the news lately about new solar powered devices able to make fresh water from seawater for a penny a gallon. Maybe the economics (and politics) would be easier that way. I don’t know.

It would be a long term project, lets say a decade to build the pipeline (or desalinators) and several more to develop soils, farms, infrastructure and, well, civilization. It would take a bit of diplomacy to get or bribe or cajole Egypt to give up/sell the water and the land, but one can dream. Its not like they are particularly using either the outflow to the sea or the dry empty desert.

If I was in charge it would not be called “New Israel” or “New Palestine” but “New Sinai” and make it clear that it would be open to all faiths, with a democratic system and safeguards against the takeover of the controls by any one faith community. Force them to discover that they can live in close proximity without violence. Maybe that idea could take hold and eventually spread a bit to the northwest.

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