Jordan draws its water from three main sources: groundwater (58%), surface water (26%), and treated wastewater (16%). That breakdown, reported by Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation for 2022, masks a deeper problem. The country has just 61 cubic meters of renewable freshwater per person per year, roughly one-eighth of the 500 cubic meters that marks the internationally recognized line for absolute water scarcity. Few countries on Earth are more water-stressed.
Groundwater: The Backbone of Supply
More than half of Jordan’s water comes from underground. The country taps a network of aquifer basins spread across its territory, but the most significant is the Ram Sandstone aquifer, also known as the Disi aquifer. This massive formation of Cambro-Ordovician rock stretches between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, ranges from 500 to over 4,000 meters thick, and holds water that fell as rain 10,000 to 35,000 years ago.
That last detail matters. The Disi is a fossil aquifer, meaning it receives virtually no modern recharge. Every liter pumped out is a liter that won’t be replaced on any human timescale. Jordan completed a major pipeline from the Disi aquifer to Amman in 2013, and it now supplies a significant share of the capital’s drinking water. With careful management, the aquifer can serve for decades, but it is a finite reserve being steadily drawn down.
Other aquifer basins across the country are technically renewable, recharged by seasonal rainfall. In practice, most are being pumped at rates that exceed natural replenishment. Illegal wells, particularly for agriculture, have worsened the overdraft problem in several basins.
Surface Water: Rivers Under Pressure
Jordan’s surface water comes primarily from the Yarmouk River, the Zarqa River, and smaller tributaries that feed into the Jordan River and the Jordan Valley. The Yarmouk, which forms part of the border with Syria, historically carried the largest volume. But upstream damming by Syria and diversion by Israel have drastically reduced the flow reaching Jordan.
Under the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, Jordan receives specific water allocations. Israel transfers 20 million cubic meters (MCM) from the Jordan River to Jordan each summer, plus an additional 10 MCM of desalinated water from saline springs that would otherwise flow into the river. These treaty volumes help, but they represent a small fraction of national demand in a country that used over 1,100 MCM in 2022.
The Jordan Valley itself remains the country’s agricultural heartland, and surface water resources there are stretched thin across competing demands for farming and municipal supply.
Treated Wastewater and Agriculture
Jordan has turned treated wastewater into a serious water source, not a footnote. The 16% share in the national supply goes almost entirely to farming. Of all the water used for agriculture in Jordan, 40% comes from treated wastewater reuse.
The As-Samra wastewater treatment plant, east of Amman, is the centerpiece of this system. Expanded in 2008 with USAID support, it processes sewage from the Amman and Zarqa governorates and delivers around 133 MCM of treated water for irrigation in the Jordan Valley. The plant generates roughly 80% of its own energy from biogas, making it relatively efficient to operate. Biosolids from the treatment process can also be reused as fertilizer.
Religious and cultural considerations in the Arab world generally prevent treated wastewater from being used directly for drinking. Instead, it flows to farms for unrestricted Class A agriculture, delivered straight from treatment plants to irrigators. This arrangement effectively frees up freshwater that would otherwise go to fields, redirecting it to household taps instead.
Where Half the Water Disappears
Jordan’s supply problem is compounded by enormous losses in its distribution network. Non-revenue water, the share lost to leaks, pipe breaks, and unauthorized connections, sits at 53.3%. That means for every two liters pumped into the system, roughly one never reaches a paying customer. Despite three decades of investment in loss-reduction programs, the rate has barely budged.
For residents, this translates into intermittent supply. Most Jordanian households do not have water flowing from their taps around the clock. In cities like Amman, municipal water is typically delivered on a rotating schedule, often once a week during summer months. Families store water in rooftop tanks to get through the days between deliveries. Those who can afford it buy supplemental water from private tanker trucks.
The Aqaba Desalination Project
Jordan’s most ambitious plan to close the gap between supply and demand is the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project. A new desalination plant near the Red Sea port of Aqaba would produce 300 MCM of freshwater per year, with 250 MCM piped north to Amman and 50 MCM kept for Aqaba. That single project would boost national supply by roughly a quarter.
Construction is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2026. The pipeline will need to push desalinated water more than 300 kilometers north and over 1,000 meters uphill to reach the capital, making it a massive engineering and energy undertaking. International financing, including from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, is involved in the project’s assessment and planning.
This project replaced an earlier proposal, the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal, which was shelved after years of feasibility debates. If the Aqaba plant delivers on its targets, it would mark the first time Jordan has had a major water source not dependent on rainfall, aquifer depletion, or negotiations with neighboring countries.
Why the Shortage Keeps Getting Worse
Jordan’s water crisis is driven by geography, climate, and population growth working together. The country is more than 80% desert. Annual rainfall is low and increasingly erratic. Meanwhile, the population has grown rapidly, more than doubling since the early 1990s, driven in large part by successive waves of refugees from Iraq, Syria, and other conflicts. Each new arrival adds demand to a system that was already overextended.
Agriculture consumes 51% of Jordan’s total water use despite contributing a relatively small share of GDP. Municipal use takes 46%, and industry just 3%. Rebalancing those shares is politically difficult because farming supports rural livelihoods and food security, but the math is stark: Jordan is irrigating crops with water it cannot replace.
The combination of fossil aquifer depletion, infrastructure losses above 50%, growing demand, and a climate trending hotter and drier means Jordan’s water situation will likely tighten further before projects like the Aqaba desalination plant come online. For now, the country manages through rationing, reuse, and a constant balancing act between competing needs.