Sep. 2--AMMAN -- Jordan Valley farmers will receive less than 40 per cent of their water needs next year if the coming winter fails to bring enough rainfall, a senior water official said on Monday.

The country's major dams were already at one-third of their total capacity of 327 million cubic metres (mcm) by the end of last winter, forcing the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA) to reduce water allocations pumped to farmers, JVA Secretary General Musa Jamaini said yesterday.

The JVA decreased water shares distributed to farmers from 55 per cent of their needs last year to 40 per cent this summer, Jamaini said, attributing the drop to inadequate rainfall and increasing demand on the country's limited water resources.

Jordan has received less than 4.3 billion cubic metres of water this year, less than half of the long-term annual average of 8.5 billion cubic metres. According to Minister of Water and Irrigation Raed Abu Saud, the country's dams held only 40 per cent of their total storage capacity as of June.

Normally, 30 to 40 per cent of water stored in the Kingdom's dams is held as a strategic reserve to ensure a continuous supply of water to farmers in case of a dry year.

Jamaini said the authority has prepared an emergency plan to address next year's expected water shortage, warning that if the winter fails to bring enough rainfall, the water situation will be "very difficult".

"As part of the authority's emergency plan, we have floated a tender for extending a 47 kilometre pipeline to transfer water from the King Talal Dam to the farthest point in Northern Ghor," Jamaini said.

The 75mcm King Talal Dam receives the majority of its water from Khirbet Al Samra Water Treatment Plant. From there, water is pumped to irrigate crops in the central Jordan Valley and parts of the Northern Ghor, according to Jamaini.

The JVA official pointed out that the Jordan Valley's daily water needs are estimated at millions of cubic metres, with Northern Ghor receiving irrigated water from various sources such as the Yarmouk River, Lake Tiberias and the Wihdeh, Wadi Ziglab and Wadi Al Arab dams.

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