Five hundred meters from the shore stands the last remnant of the failed attempt to chase after the receding shoreline, a wooden gangplank that was used to reach the water at the end of the 1990s. From there to the waterline lies a salty desert, riven by deep fissures containing freshwater creeks flowing from the Ein Feshkha springs. The glider descended into one of these canyons and flew along it. The canyons are another lesser-known feature, like the sinkholes discussed below, that are associated with the Dead Sea’s falling water level. It’s not only people that chase the receding water; it’s the creeks as well. Every year the creeks carve deeper into the salty soil, creating new canyons, some of them dozens of meters deep. The creeks flow at their bottom. It’s tempting to view these impressive canyons as a wondrous primeval landscape but in fact, this is new terrain, formed in front of our eyes over the last 20 years, in a place that until recently was part of a sea. As in other places along the Dead Sea shoreline, even those who decry the disaster have to admit that it leaves behind visually stunning natural attractions that make for beautiful photos.

Sometimes you need a new vantage point to understand an older picture. Two months ago a small camera-equipped, motorized glider took off close to a signpost that said “steps down to the Dead Sea 1984.” The location was the Einot Tzukim (Ein Feshkha) nature reserve in the northern Dead Sea area. Near the sign were some stone steps on which people had descended to the water’s edge 32 years ago. Behind them was an abandoned shower. As the glider took off, it showed the mountains of the Judean Desert, silent witnesses to the grim drama taking place nearby. When the glider turned eastward, the scene of the disaster came into view: the Dead Sea shoreline, to which bathers had descended on those stone steps, was barely visible. Now the shoreline merged with the Moab Mountains visible on the horizon and with the cloudy skies, two kilometers away from the steps that were built in the mid-1980s.

Fields of sinkholes instead of beaches, roads swept away by floods, large industrial ponds instead of a sea and one overarching question: What can be done so that things don’t get even worse in the next 20 years?

As we proceed southward with the glider, we encounter the area’s really critical problem – the sinkholes. After taking off from a small parking lot next to the highway, the glider comes across this stupendous geological phenomenon slightly south of the abandoned Mineral Beach. As the view opens up, dozens of holes can be seen. The large ones have merged, leading to the collapse of an entire area. Some of the holes have filled up with green-gray water. A broken-down lifeguard tower lies on the former beach next to the water’s edge. Behind it are rows upon rows of crumbling sunshades. A bit further south are some dead date palms, with their tops cropped off, which used to belong to Kibbutz Ein Gedi before they were abandoned because of the sinkholes. On the other side of the road is an overnight parking lot that was the first location to be closed when the sinkholes appeared, 18 years ago. The place now looks like a set for a war movie, full of old props: large craters, shattered buildings that collapsed into the sinkholes, dead trees, pipes and cables hanging in midair. Nearby is a gas station that was closed in 2014 and a bit to the north is the large bridge spanning the Arugot Stream. It was built at great expense using advanced technology in an attempt to contend with the sinkholes, but only six years passed before it, too, was closed.

To answer these questions, we must go back to the beginning. In 1970, three years after the Six-Day War, the government launched a huge infrastructure project – paving a road between Ein Feshkha and Ein Gedi. The new road connected two separate sections of the existing Route 90, making it the country’s eastern “spine” and the longest highway in Israel, running from Metula in the north to the country’s southern tip, Eilat. As it was being paved, engineers expressed concerns that the road bed was too low and the sea might flood it. Just south of Ein Feshkha they rerouted the road so as not to damage a rock used earlier by British researchers to mark sea levels early in the 20th century. It quickly became apparent that rising sea levels were the least of the worries that would afflict this road. The whole story is encapsulated in a large Excel file at the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI), a file which is constantly being updated. Its key data show that in 1976, the Dead Sea lay -398 meters below sea level, whereas in December 2015 it had reached almost -430 meters. And the rate of change is rapidly accelerating – in the first two decades since 1976, the water level dropped by 6 meters each decade, in the third decade it fell by 9 meters and in the last decade it plummeted by 11 meters.

Further knotty questions arise regarding the future: What will happen to communities in the area – to Kalya and Mitzpeh Shalem beyond the 1967 border, and Ein Gedi and Neve Zohar within the border? What will happen to tourism? Will the Dead Sea Works continue to extract minerals from the sea?

The declining water level that creates the sinkholes is causing another geological phenomenon – the deepening of the area’s stream beds – which is less talked about but no less critical. As sea levels drop and the shoreline recedes, the streams’ drainage area lengthens. This intensifies the force of the water flowing down from the hills to the sea, deepening and widening the stream beds with each successive flood. Route 90, which serves as somewhat of a dam between the mountains and the sea, is hit by powerful floods every winter. The bridges spanning these streams cannot withstand the new circumstances. For local residents, this means that every winter will bring more frequent and longer-lasting closures of the road, as they wait for the Israel National Roads Company to complete repairs. Despite these difficulties, this road will almost certainly remain a major route to Eilat or Masada 20 years from now. Maintaining the road will become increasingly expensive, challenging planners with complex engineering problems. Bridges along the highway will turn into large-scale, extremely costly infrastructure projects, and the surrounding wild desert landscape and nature reserves will be irrevocably damaged so that humans will be able to use a strip of asphalt.

It’s relatively easy to guess what won’t happen. Unless something totally unexpected occurs in the next 20 years, the water level of the Dead Sea will continue to drop, falling an estimated 25 meters below its current level by 2036. Even if a plan to channel water in from the Red Sea is implemented, it’s hard to envisage how this will change things over the next two decades. Under present circumstances, sinkholes will continue to open at an even more rapid pace. These will irreversibly change the landscape along the Dead Sea’s western coast; indeed, it is almost certain that 20 years from now, there will be no access to the natural shoreline. Anyone wishing to swim in the Dead Sea will have to do so in the southern basin, as is the case today, in industrial ponds close to local hotels or in artificial lagoons.

The glider thoroughly documents everything that was closed and abandoned in 2014 due to the sinkholes: beaches, the bridge, the gas station and the parking lot. It’s possible that 2014 will be remembered as a turning point in the story of the drying up of the Dead Sea. In that year the sinkholes stopped being just a headache for engineers and planners and became a national problem. This article, however, will deal not with the way things look now but the way they’ll look in 20 years. Will the shoreline be visible from the points the glider took off from this time? Will people be able to use the road to reach those points? What will happen to nearby communities? To hotels in the area? To local industry? Will it be possible to walk down to the shoreline at all?

Logically, it would seem that as the sea dries up, the drop in its level should diminish since it becomes saltier with a smaller surface area, providing less opportunity for evaporation. This, however, is not the case. A study conducted recently by the GSI showed that the reason the sea level is dropping faster is the construction of new dams in Jordan and Syria, which is diverting water that would otherwise reach the Dead Sea. Thus, the main cause of falling levels in recent decades is the seizure of water by Israel, Jordan and Syria. A secondary cause is industrial plants in Israel and Jordan pumping out water during the process of extracting potash and other minerals. These factories are responsible for 20 percent of the annual loss of Dead Sea water, although the manufacturers argue that 9 percent is a more realistic figure.

Over the decades, several plans, some of them quite bizarre, have been put forth to rehabilitate the sea. One involves an agreement signed a year ago by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, according to which water produced as a by-product of desalination would be transferred to the Dead Sea via a pipeline starting from Aqaba on the Red Sea and passing through Jordan. This is envisioned as a pilot project for a more extensive sea-to-sea pipeline. Currently, this project appears to be no closer to fruition than it was in Theodor Herzl’s 1902 Zionist work “Old-New Land” (Altneuland), in which he described his dream of building a canal to the Dead Sea.

5,548 and counting

For many years, the dropping sea level was not thought to be a problem. Beach operators got accustomed to it and considered it part of the routine. Lifeguard towers had wheels attached so they could be moved forward every year. New steps were constructed from time to time and access pathways were extended. When the first reports of sinkholes in the Neve Zohar area surfaced in the 1980s, they were regarded as a geological curiosity. By the end of the 1990s, however, the anomaly had turned into a problem. Sinkholes appeared in date groves and in the overnight parking lot near Ein Gedi. In 1998, the regional council’s chief engineer ordered the closure of the parking lot, and two years later, some of the date groves were abandoned.

Just like the falling water level, the rate of sinkhole creation is speeding up. In 1996, there were 220 sinkholes; by 2006 this had burgeoned to 1,808; and last year, the number skyrocketed to 5,548. Dr. Gideon Baer, who heads the GSI unit that studies and monitors the Dead Sea, estimates that 500 new sinkholes open up every year, an average of more than one per day. Sinkholes are a known phenomenon around the world, but their appearance at this rate and intensity is unparalleled.

Clockwise from upper left: The descent to the beach in 1990; steps going down to the beach in 1984; a dried-up date palm in the Ein Feshkha nature reserve; the location of the changing rooms in 1990. Photos: Moti Milrod

The accepted theoretical explanation for the phenomenon is that a drop in the level of salty water enables the penetration of fresh water into a salt layer that lies between 5 and 60 meters underground. Fresh water’s high capacity for dissolving salt creates large empty cavities underground. These cavities rise to the surface like an air bubble in water, until the uppermost layers close to the ground suddenly collapse, creating a pit. Understanding this process has enabled better preparation for the appearance of sinkholes.

After it was understood that sinkholes would appear only in places where there were underground salt layers, the GSI started drilling to map salt layers. These maps currently constitute the basis of all engineering projects in the area.

It’s tempting to view these impressive canyons as wondrous primeval landscape, but in reality this is new terrain.

In recent years, geologists have been focusing on a more thorough investigation of sinkhole formation processes. They’ve noticed, for example, that sinkholes tend to arrange themselves in a straight line, probably a reflection of the underground line along which fresh water emerges. One of the more amazing and worrisome effects is the encounter between sinkholes and flash floods, which leads to the appearance of new sinkholes. In several sites, the following process has been filmed and documented: Flood water moves toward the sea but doesn’t reach it. Instead, it is swallowed by sinkholes lying in its path, several hundred meters before the shoreline. Three hours later water emerges as a new spring near the shore. By this time the water is very salty, meaning that within three hours it has already dissolved large quantities of salt. A week later, dozens of new sinkholes appear close to the original one. “There is a positive feedback mechanism in action – more water leads to more cavities and thus more sinkholes,” explains Baer. “Ultimately the whole area sinks and floodwaters don’t reach the sea and flow into these depressions instead, so that ever larger amounts of water end up in the ground.”

In 1996, 220 sinkholes were counted; last year there were 5,548. Photo: Moti Milrod

The highlight of this research was the development of a system that can predict where the next sinkhole will appear. It is based on a satellite operated by the Italian space agency, which passes over the Dead Sea every 16 days and produces a radar image of the area. By comparing the sets of images, places where the ground has shifted, even minimally, can be identified ahead of a major collapse. “The ultimate goal is not to have sinkholes opening up that we didn’t know about in advance,” says Baer. A report compiled by the GSI in preparation for the construction of a Red Sea-Dead Sea canal attempted to determine what would occur if water flowed in from the Red Sea. Scientists estimate that if the flow is moderate enough to slow down but not halt the drying up of the Dead Sea, the annual number of new sinkholes could diminish. However, if the flow is significant enough to raise the level of the Dead Sea, the problem is likely to be exacerbated. Since Red Sea water is less salty than that of the Dead Sea, this will increase the dissolution of underground salt and thus speed up the appearance of sinkholes.