The Jordanian capital of Amman and its environs are home to about 2 million citizens, roughly half the country's entire population. Precipitation in the Amman area averages no more than 300 mm per year; on top of that, it is concentrated mostly in the period from November to March, a situation that makes securing an uninterrupted water supply a matter of life and death. Currently, Amman gets most of its drinking water from underground wells nearby and from the King Abdullah Canal in the Jordan Valley. However, the groundwater wells have been overused for many years; as a result, their water levels have been going down and their salinity up. Not only that, but the pumping facilities that supply Amman with canal water have been in use for a decade and are beginning to lose their pumping capacity due to wear and tear. These trends have made the supply of drinking water to the Amman area an increasingly formidable and expensive task. Consequently, most citizens now have no choice but to purchase water at high prices.

As a major step forward in the Middle East peace process, Jordan and Israel concluded a peace treaty in 1994. With that development, Jordan was allotted a larger share of water resources from the Yarmuk River, a key tributary upstream of the King Abdullah Canal, and allowed to utilize freshwater resources from Lake Tiberias, which lies inside Israeli territory. Jordan thus faced the pressing task of tapping into these new resources and supplying more drinking water to Amman, a metropolitan area marked by rapid population growth. For that purpose, the Jordanian government drew up an improvement plan that incorporated projects to replace the aging pumping facilities in its existing water supply network, and requested grant-based financing for that purpose from the Japanese government. Japan in response decided to assist projects aimed at upgrading the machinery and making related enhancements at pumping stations in four locations.

It is anticipated that these efforts will effectively extend the benefits of the Middle East peace process to all Jordan's citizens by relieving the country of its water pinch and easing the economic burden on citizens who have long had to buy their supplies of drinking water.

Sedimentation reservoir with chlorination facility