376
T.M. Abu-Sharar andA.M. Battikhi
alternative irrigation of freshwater. The alternative ir-
result of the improvement in the drinking water quality.
More recently, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation has
become authoritative of well closure and imprisonment
of well owners in cases of illegal or over pumping of
groundwater. In this regard, the Ministry usually issues
rigation may be practiced seasonally (during a given
crop growing season) or annually (perhaps every other
year). Exact management of irrigation waters of dual
quality must be subject to further field investigation.
Moreover, preference must be given to irrigating the
Northern JV with TWW. Such an arrangement would
ensure optimum usage of the high rainfall in that zone
for salt leaching from surface soil layer. In this con-
text, two pipe lines independently conveying fresh and
poor (TWW and other saline waters) quality waters
and running along the entire JV must be established.
Although such an arrangement is relatively sophisti-
3
a license of annual pumping not to exceed 50,000 m
aimed at on-farm irrigation. This amount of water is
sufficient to irrigate about 10 ha. On the other hand,
pumping water for domestic consumption requires a
3
certain official permission subject to a fee per/m . In
many cases, well owners have demonstrated resistance
to such regulations especially to fix water meters on
the main well-intake pipes for monitoring purposes.
cated and remotely accessible, its application seems • Encouraging contracted (market-oriented) agriculture
an inevitable measure to be undertaken, especially to
maintain high land productivity and healthy environ-
mental profile in the JV.
Usage of TWW must take into consideration enrich-
ment of that water with macro- and micro-nutrients.
Subsequently, irrigation scheduling and volumes of
TWW delivered in each irrigation cycle must be based
on phenotypic crop nutrient requirement and soil physical
and chemical properties.
As an alternative to direct employment of TWW in
irrigation, effluent from KTP can be purified by mak-
ing use of the large water head between KTP (174 m
ASL) and JV floor at Deir Alla (H•300m BSL). Such
a water head can be employed directly in a reverse
to replace haphazard practice which is the prime rea-
son for the low farmers’ income. In this regard, a unit
3
price of irrigation water of 0.7 US$ per/m (0.5 JD
3
•
•
per/m ) may be taken as a threshold value below which
agricultural production would not become feasible. The
concept of contracted agriculture would ensure such a
minimum net return to the farmers. By doing so, the
Government can generate funds to help upgrade the
irrigation water sector and can also maximize use effi-
ciency of irrigation water. Both components would have
a positive impact on saving a portion of irrigation water
for drinking purposes.
At a national level, the resulting shortage in irrigation
osmosis facilities established at some points along the water can be met by employing TWW in irrigation as pro-
Zarqa River running the course down to the Jordan posed above or by switching from conventional agricul-
River. The produced water will be of high quality and tural methods into high-tech practices, especially green
adequately suitable for non-restricted agriculture and houses and advanced irrigation systems. Although the
conservative irrigation. Reverse osmosis technology above regulatory measures can meet the increasing de-
has been proven feasible by many farmers in the JV mand for freshwater in the coming short term, a long term
even for production of high water consuming crops and genuine solution must be sought. This can take one or
like banana (JICA, 1995).
The pumping of groundwater in the highland must be
more of the following:
•
reduced to the estimated annual safe yield of about • Importation of Water: Preliminary studies have been
2
90 MCM. In this regard, Azraq is the most depleted
conducted to assess possibilities for importing water to
Jordan. A study was completed in 1983 to import 160
MCM / year from River Euphrates in Iraq to supply
the northern part of the country. Another major water
importing project is the Turkish Peace pipeline. This
project is intended to divert the water of Rivers Ceyhan
and Seyhan in south Turkey to supply Jordan and other
Gulf Cooperation Council countries with water. The
major concern with regard to importing water is politi-
cal uncertainty encountered in such multi-national
projects. Other options were developed and studied
like the diversion of Euphrates River to Jordan (Howard
Humphrey, 1986) and pipe line diversion of 150 MCM
annually from the Litani River water to Amman for
domestic consumption. The estimated cost of the later
Aquifer with over pumping approaching 230 percent
of the annual safe yield. Azraq has long been a desert
depression oasis (in the north east of the country) re-
ceiving extensive amounts of runoff water which re-
sulted in very rich ecosystem in terms of biological
diversity. The over pumping has caused a catastrophic
impact on plant and animal life in that area. Rehabilita-
tion of that oasis can only be initiated by reducing well
water pumping, especially for agriculture. Table 10
shows that water pumping for irrigation constitutes 112
percent of the safe yield. Unfortunately, most of irri-
gated farms in that area have been unsuccessful and
do not have any advantage over other irrigated areas.
If substantial cut in volume of irrigation water is adopted
then real progress could be achieved on several levels:
3
option was 0.68 US$ per/m (GTZ, 1998). The option
(
1) rehabilitation of the Oasis itself; (2) improving drink-
of diverting part of the Euphrates River water to Jor-
dan through the north eastern Badia was postponed
ing water quality; and (3) improving TWW quality as a
IWRA, Water International, Volume 27, Number 3, September 2002
Bergmann
