Water Security for Zion

The State of Zion is one of unbridled potential, but one of the biggest road blocks in the way of Zion leveraging its huge sums of both human capital and financial capital is its lack of water resources. This is especially true of central Zion, where the vast majority of its population lives. Beyond small and generally ineffective desalination works in the southern parts of the country, the only major water source for Zion is the Sea of Galilee and its tributaries. This water source is not unique to Zion, where it forms a major border with Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. This caused a large degree of competition and problems between the states as both Zionist and Arab engineers and political leaders have developed many plans, often mutually exclusive, on how to best utilize the water and who should receive it. However, in the first successful negotiations without mediation between the regional states, the Galilee Water Program was agreed upon by Zion, Syria, and Jordan. The states agreed on water restrictions up to certain disclosed amounts per annum, and which water sources would be available to each nation.

The vast majority of the water afforded to the State of Zion comes from the largest river in the region, the Jordan River. Another major river, the Yarmouk, provides a small amount of water for Zion and various small rivers and tributaries of the Jordan River within the West Bank and the Judean hills also provide water for Zion. The State of Zion has developed a plan, called the National Water Carrier of Zion, which will carry the water of the Jordan River and the others through the north of Zion into central and southern Zion. In total, the water sent through the National Water Carrier of Zion is approximately 1.2 million cubic meters of water every year.

The National Water Carrier begins with a very long pipeline hundreds of meters long underneath the Sea of Galilee, where the water is taken to a man-made reservoir directly adjacent to the Sea itself. This reservoir is where the water is measured and maintained by the special UN body monitoring Zion's water consumption, and it is also where it leads into the first pumping station. The pipelines, made of steel and then cast into concrete, float both in and out of the pumping station. The pumping station then separates the water in the reservoir into three pipes, all of which flow into another canal south of the pumping station. The canal is built into a mountainside and the water is sent through entirely with the power of gravity. The canal is nine feet deep when it is full, and it flows into the second reservoir and pumping station combination. This pumping station, a few dozen kilometers to the west of Tiberias, has the most difficult job of them all, where the water is taken up over one hundred meters from where it rests in the reservoir and pushed into a major tunnel running from the pump station all the way to the final resting point in the north. This is the Eshkol Reservoir, where the water is then filtrated through a sedimentation pond that can hold up to two million cubic meters of water. The minerals and other toxic materials within the water rest at the bottom of the pond, leaving the water clean and filtered. The inflow and outflow of water is heavily regulated and controlled through a system of smaller steel pipes and secondary reservoirs to allow water to flow by demand. A final factory is built here as well, where chemicals are added to specific secondary reservoirs to make the water safe for drinking. Special canals are built out from this factory where the water is sent to major communities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Jenin, and eventually all the way to settlements bordering the Negev like Zohar.

The water is split between use for drinking water and for irrigation and agricultural use. Only approximately twenty percent of the total water consumption per annum, about two hundred and forty thousand cubic meters of water, is used for drinking water in central Zion and the West Bank. The rest, a little under a million cubic meters of water, is to be used for agricultural use in the fertile plains and fields of Zion. The water travels over one hundred and fifty kilometers from its starting place, and the final resting places in the very south of Zion will not be completed until the year 1965. The total cost of the project is rumored to be between four hundred and five hundred thousand Zionite dollars, but Prime Minister Golda Meir and her cabinet believe this to be a cornerstone of the State of Zion for eternity.