Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance number of international donors. The water level in the Dead Sea is shrinking at a rate of more than one metre per year, and its surface area has shrunk by about 30% in the last 20 years. This is largely due to the diversion of over 90% of the water of the Jordan River. In the early 1960s, the river moved 1,500 million cubic metres of water every year from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Dams, canals, and pumping stations built by Israel, Jordan and Syria now divert water for crops and drinking, and have reduced the
Dead Sea Essenes settled on the Dead Sea's western shore; Pliny the Elder identifies their location with the words, "on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda" ("Natural History", Bk 5.73); and it is therefore a hugely popular but contested hypothesis today, that same Essenes are identical with the settlers at Qumran and that "the Dead Sea Scrolls" discovered during the 20th century in the nearby caves had been their own library. Josephus identified the Dead Sea in geographic proximity to the ancient Biblical city of Sodom. However, he referred to the