Today the resort sits marooned on a spit of wasteland almost a mile from the water a trolley carries guests to and from the beach along a track that must be extended every year. “The good news is that if you get swallowed by a sinkhole, they name it after you,” Bromberg deadpans.Īs we trudge back along the shore, Bromberg points out the Ein Gedi Spa, built along the waterline about 20 years ago. Environmental experts believe that hotels along the shore are also in danger. In that time, sinkholes have swallowed a portion of road, date-palm fields and several buildings on the sea’s northwest coast. More than 1,000 sinkholes have appeared in the past 15 years. As this fresh water diffuses into salt deposits beneath the surface of the shoreline, the water slowly dissolves the deposits until the earth above collapses without warning. The Dead Sea is shrinking, and as it recedes, the fresh water aquifers along the perimeter of the lake are receding along with it. Up and down the Dead Sea, on the Jordanian and Israeli coasts, the shoreline is pockmarked by these sinkholes-testifying to an environmental catastrophe. Bromberg stops abruptly beside a gaping crater, more than 60 feet deep, and a sign that reads DANGER: OPEN PITS. The temperature is pushing 110 degrees, the sun beats down on my neck, and my feet crunch pieces of petrified driftwood and calcium deposits-wrinkled white sheets that bear a disturbing resemblance to human rib cages. Towering sandstone mesas loom above our heads the saline lake extends like a shimmering sheet of turquoise toward the hazy mountains of Jordan. On a sweltering August afternoon, the Israeli environmental activist leads me along the shore of the Dead Sea, watching every step we take.
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