مجموعة ٢/٥٤ "لجنة الشرق الأوسط (الرسمية): مجموعة العمل" [ظ‎‎١‎٩‎٧] (٦٤٢/٣٩٤)

(3) JORDAN-YARMUK CANALISATION PROJECT
(i) De8criT)tion of Project
21, Mr. M.G. lonidos, formerly Development Officer to the
Mandatory Government of Transjordan, prepared a report on the
water resources of Transjordan and their development in 193o and
recommended that a major irrigation project, involving the
canalisation of the waters of the Jordan and the Yarmuk, was
practicable. Mr. G. Walpole, the present Director of
Surveys in Transjordan, has prepared a rough estimate of the
cost of this Scheme and the numbers who might be settled as a
result of it. Mr.-Walpole assumes intensive cultivation would
be developed as a result of the project and that all the owned
land in the Jordan Valley would be purchased from its present
owners and redistributed as holdings of 25 dunums (5.75 acres;
per family on cultivation leases. Half the mean annual discharge
of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers would be utilised for the full
development of the project. On this basis Mr. Walpole estimates
that the project could provide for the settlement of 8,000
families (about 40,000 individuals). He estimates the total
cost as follows:
Cost of expropriation
Canalisation of the Jordan and Yarmuk
Diversion of the Yarmuk winter
floods into Lake Tiberias for
* use in the Summer
Housing of 8,000 families at £300
per house
Purchase of implements and ploughing
animals at £100 per family
Anti-Malaria work
Unforeseen expenditure
£ 1 , 891,600
7 , 500,000
500,000
2 , 400,000
800,000
50,000
250,000
Total £13,391,600
22. Mr. Walpole points out that the Jordan Valley is
climatically particularly well situatedfor the production of
special crops (vegetables and fruit) which can be placed on
the market much earlier than similar crops grown elsewhere
and therefore bring in higher prices. If such crops are
developed in the Jordan Valley it should be possible to
charge cultivators there higher mSsS than are paid elsewhere.
He recommends that the loan or loans which will be required to
finance the project should be raised on the security of the
land and repaid from the revenue that will accrue from the
cultivators* rents. He estimates that the annual revenue from
rent might amount to £ 750,000 while the annual cost of
maintenance might be about £250,000, thus leaving &n annual
balance for payment of interest and annual payments into a
sinking fund of £500,000. On this basis, it would take the
Transjordan Government some thirty years to repay the loan.
Mr. Walpole recommends that an Authority should be set up to
administer the project. The Authority would lay down crop
policy and market the produce. The Chancery at Amman have
/now..„