The government may finally build a dam across the Orontes River, allowing Lebanon to make use of its share of the waterway and irrigate thirsty farms in the Bekaa.
Officials at the Energy and Water Ministry told The Daily Star that a study was under way to evaluate Lebanon’s water needs and examine ways to channel water to towns of the Eastern Bekaa.
But some Hermel residents reacted warily to news of the government’s intentions, skeptical of long-rehearsed rumors and concerned over its impact on local industries, practices and politics.
The government’s previous attempts at building a dam failed in part due to Syria’s objection to Lebanon’s full use of its water rights to the trans-boundary river, which were defined by a 1994 bilateral agreement.
“The Syrian objection was due to their fear that a dam would pollute the water, which they tap and drink without required treatment in Hama,” said Andre Atallah, the head of the Research and Technical Installation Department at the ministry.
But when Syrian President Bashar Assad approved the construction of a dam across the river in March, most of which flows through Syria, many predicted the current study would have a good chance for implementation.
According to Atallah, the ministry’s aim is to build a dam that can store 30-40 million cubic meters of water and would mainly be used for irrigation. This volume would require a dam of 50-70 meters in height, according to previous studies.
He explained that the dam would irrigate 6,000 out of the some 30,000 hectares of land that are fit for farming in the area.
Water will be pumped into roughly 4,000 hectares near the Baalbek town of al-Qaa, while the remaining 2,000 hectares located in Hermel will be partially pumped and partially drained by gravity.
“While water will naturally be pulled by gravity to 1,200 hectares in Hermel, it will be pumped to the remaining 800 hectares,” said Atallah, who is also a university professor.
The ministry, the Beirut-based engineering consulting group Dar al-Handassah, and Montgomery Watson Harza (MWH) will need 20 months to complete the study, he added.
MWH is an international organization that has engineered many of the largest waterworks projects in the world, including the maintenance of the Panama Canal and the planning and construction of hydropower stations in South America.
With a price tag of $120 million, the project, if officially approved, will be fully implemented by the year 2010, although Atallah predicted that water could be distributed to 1,000 hectares by 2004.
“Ultimately, while 20,000 people live off the river today, some 200,000 may do so by 2010,” said Hassan Jaafar, chief of the ministry’s Environmental Department. He added that the river currently irrigates only 500 hectares of farm land.
Atallah said he had faith in the government’s ability to procure the necessary funds, adding: “We are bound to find those who are willing to provide funding.”
With four dams across the Orontes, Syria uses the river extensively for irrigation and drinking purposes. Lebanon, however, has thus far been unable to do so.
A bilateral agreement signed in 1994 entitled Lebanon to tap 80 million cubic meters of water annually out of the average total of some 400 million. Meanwhile, the country benefits from no more than 20 million cubic meters per year, most of which irrigates farm land on the river’s banks.
However, the river does not need a dam with a capacity of 80 million cubic meters to make that amount of water available, Atallah argued.
“We will store water during the winter and use the stored water during the summer when the flow of the river is low,” he said.
The stored water is also likely to be used to generate 15-20 megawatts of electricity, which would help operate the water pumping stations.
Following preliminary investigations, the ministry hoped to place the dam 2 kilometers southeast of the town of Hermel in an area called Dowwar Abdel-Hadi.
While residents of the area use this name with familiarity, Atallah described the location as “where an Israeli armored vehicle captured by Hizbullah stands.”
In early May, the river flowed powerfully at this location, which is about 4 kilometers north of the river’s source in Ain al-Zarqa, 650 meters above sea level.
The Orontes River, which is 610 kilometers long, flows for only 16 kilometers in Lebanon before running through Syria and spilling into the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey.
Its course on Lebanese soil was previously thought to be 35 kilometers long until a 1997 supplementary bilateral pact excluded the Labweh Spring from the river’s total water length and count.
The river’s basin was originally estimated at 1,850 square kilometers, according to past bilateral agreements between Syria and Lebanon. But the 1994 agreement reduced the basin to 1,600 square kilometers.
“We convinced the Syrians that Labweh is not a permanent tributary to the Orontes and therefore should not be counted from our share,” explained Jaafar, who is also a member of the Lebanese-Syrian committee on ways to share the river.
Since Assad’s approval of the dam’s construction, Syria has evidently dropped its concerns over pollution.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a member of the Lebanese-Syrian committee reported a striking shift in the Syrian stand in January regarding shared water.
He said negotiations over dam construction in Lebanon began in January, ahead of Assad’s public approval.
“We went to Syria on Jan. 17 to discuss ways to share the water of the Kabir River and we expected to have a heated discussion,” he said.
“But we were surprised that the Syrians were astonishingly responsive to our water needs and granted us a written pledge that we were entitled to 20 percent of the river,” he continued.
He added that the proposal arose amid this atmosphere of cooperation between the two states.
Yet many Hermel residents responded with disinterest when told that the long-awaited dam might soon be built.
“It’s all imaginary,” said Abdel-Baset Abdel-Hadi, 42, who said that there have been proposals for a dam for as long as he can remember.
“I will not believe it until I see the digging taking place before my very eyes,” he said.
Abdel-Hadi had no idea that the current study places the dam on his property, Dowwar Abdel-Hadi, which was named after his family.
If this were the case, he said he would not object if he received proper compensation for the 4-dunum (0.4-hectare) property and as long as his larger 20-dunum plot would benefit from irrigation .
Like many small-scale farmers who are over-burdened by water shortages and crushing competition from cheaper imports from Syria and Jordan, Abdel-Hadi has left his larger plot fallow for years.
He and many others have opened fisheries in a bid to find an alternative source of income. But Atallah promised to avoid harming the 82 fisheries situated along the Orontes River, saying that the location of the dam would inflict the minimum level of damages to these businesses.
The head of the Bekaa Fish Breeders Union, Hussein Qanso, told The Daily Star that the location of the dam at Dowwar Abdel-Hadi would drown only 12 fisheries, accounting for only 10 percent of total fish production in the area.
“We will demand that  (the government) compensate them,” he said.
Water shortages in the area have also led to excessive well-drilling between the 1970s and early 1990s. The wells have not only depleted the area’s water table, but also produced much less water than farmers needed.
The Lebanese government counted 4,000 wells following the 1994 agreement and has since banned the practice to preserve the groundwater supply that feeds the river’s main watercourse.
The ban was prompted by Syria’s decision to include any well dug after 1994 in the calculation of Lebanon’s water share.
Nevertheless, some Bekaa landowners continued to dig wells, including Baalbek-Hermel MP Assem Qanso, who has dug two 150-meter deep wells since 1998, according to one of his farm attendants.
Qanso and other large-scale landowners, such as Hassan Dandash, are among the fortunate few who can afford the high cost of pumping water from the river to their fields several kilometers away.
“Pumping water costs me LL60 to LL70 million every year, including expenses for diesel and maintenance,” Dandash told The Daily Star. “With the presence of a dam, I could pay half that price.”
His 2.5-kilometer water pipe can be seen dissecting the arid Hermel and al-Qaa landscape until it reaches his fruit orchards and vegetable patches.
“When I began pumping water, the government wasn’t even there to give us licenses,” said Dandash, who claimed to be the first to tap the Orontes River in 1979, four years after the country plunged into civil war.
He said the government had no right to stop him from drawing water from the river after all these years, but that “it can charge a levy that would take into consideration the economic advantages of such pumping.”
The 67-year-old man, whose family began purchasing land in the late 1960s, owns 4,000 dunums of land in al-Qaa, but uses the water pipes for only 2,000 dunums.
To water 400 dunums of fruit trees, Dandash pumps over 20,000 cubic meters of water each month all year round, while he irrigates 1,500 dunums of seasonal crops with an average of 10,000 cubic meters daily between May and September.
While Dandash said he wanted to plant his remaining 2,000 dunums, he said he was adamantly opposed to the building of the dam, which he said would be too small to bring real economic development to the Hermel area.
Dandash also voiced concern over the ministry’s plans to pump water to the Christian town of al-Qaa, claiming this would “instigate sectarian hostilities between landowners rather than promote the area’s development.”
“If the government wants to skip my land and provide water to the property of my Maronite neighbors, then I say loud and clear: I will not accept it,” said Dandash, who admitted to his family’s deep-rooted tribal mentality.
Although all of his property is in al-Qaa, he is worried the ministry might exclude his farm land from the dam’s irrigation network.
But Atallah explained that the only reason the study planned to irrigate al-Qaa is to take advantage of its high fertility.
“This land tends to yield very well if irrigated,” he said. “We plan to irrigate areas that would give the highest revenue.”
“Anyway, the area to be irrigated has not been finalized yet,” he continued. The selection process, he said, is “highly sensitive.”

Copyright © The Daily Star