Summary
The geologist whose provisional report for the Palestine Mining Syndicate, on a January-March 1928 investigation of water supply north and west of the Dead Sea, is extracted as Annexe 4 of the Jewish Agency memoranda of July 1930; he concludes that considerable supplies of underground water at no great depth seem assured and that land south of the concessions might be reclaimed from the desert (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.55-56).
Details
- His extract describes the Jordan Valley wells (Ain Auja, Ain ed-Duk, Ain es-Sultan, Ain Hajla) on a possible fault line, and the calcium-sulphate springs west of the Dead Sea fed from a pervious bed below the Cenomanian dolomitic limestone, ultimately from rain on the Jerusalem high ground (PDF p.55).
- Two ways of making the spring water available are set out: irrigating the flat western margin of the Dead Sea, extended if the Jordan water is wholly used for irrigation and the Sea contracts, with a channel at the foot of the cliffs; and tapping the water further west, by borings at or west of a fault line about 7 kilometres west of the cliffs, where water would probably be found at a depth not exceeding, say, 100 metres and with less sulphate of calcium (PDF p.56).
- In the extract the Bukeia Plateau “is from 300 to 360 square kilometres, and includes important phosphatic deposits” (PDF p.56); the main memorandum’s quotation of Evans puts the plateau at 300 to 360 metres above the Dead Sea and about 32 square kilometres (PDF p.48). The conflict is held under Open questions on the source page.
- His conclusions rest the area’s prospects on the phosphates, the bituminous limestones with over 20 per cent volatile hydrocarbon (a roadmaking material), and underground water; the work took three months in the two concessions, with his assistant Dr. Picard and arrangements by Mr. Leibovitz, and analyses by Mr. Shlom and Professor Bobtelski in Palestine and Dr. Harwood of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. The report is signed “J. W. E.” and dated August 29th, 1928 (PDF p.56).
Related pages
Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, Jewish Agency