Gidon Bromberg, of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), recently spoke about the extreme healty dangers which are posed to participating in baptism ceremonies in the River Jordan.
"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."
What is more is that it seems the Jordan River, important to all three major monotheistic religions, is drying up. Since the 1930s, the amount of water flowing has dwindled from 1.3 billion cubic meters to just 20 million cubic meters. This is because Israel, Syria and Jordan consume up to 98 percent of the river water for their own uses. What is left behind is extremely polluted.
At Alumot Dam, just a few miles downriver from Yardenit, the official Israeli site for baptism, raw sewerage is allowed to pour into the river. The smell is so bad that it is difficult to stand beside the river for any length of time.
FoEME recently released two studies on the damage that has been done to the Jordan River, and on its possible rehabilitation.
"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.
While that sounds like a massive and expensive task, other studies how shown 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."
Bromberg believes that rehabilitating the Jordan River would also help stabilize the Dead Sea, which is shrinking ever year.
(For the full story, please go to http://www.aolnews.com)