Appendix 2 - The unified development of the water resources of the Jordan Valley region

Summary

The project was prepared at the request of the United Nations under the direction of the Tennessee Valley Authority by Charles T. Main, Inc. (Boston Mass., 1953). It is an engineering office study based upon materials, reports, and data made available to the Tennessee Valley Authority, and done without field investigations. The following is a summary of its main features.

First, the essence of the report has been described thus:

As a problem of engineering the most economic and the quickest way to get the most use from the waters of the Jordan River system requires better organisation of the headwaters on the Hasbani and in the Huleh area to serve the lands by gravity flow within that part of the Jordan watershed and use of Lake Tiberias as a storage reservoir for the flood flows of the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers. From Lake Tiberias these waters would be made available by gravity flow to irrigate lands on the east and west sides of the Jordan Valley to the south… Use of the natural reservoir afforded by Lake Tiberias takes advantage of an asset already at hand; there is no known alternative site, at any cost, for a reservoir that would effectively regulate and store the flood flows of the Jordan and its main tributary, the Yarmouk … Thus the report describes the elements of an efficient arrangement of water supply within the watershed of the Jordan River system. It does not consider political factors or attempt to set this system into the national boundaries now prevailing.

From letter submitted by Gordon Clapp, Chairman of the Board, TVA, to the Director of UNRWA; beginning of report