The Dead Sea’s Tzeelim Bay seems to belong to another planet. From what looks like salt embroidery to snow-like salt strips to pillars that emerge from the hypersaline waters, Tzeelim Bay puts on an otherworldly show of treasures exposed by the Dead Sea’s decline. But the bay, which forms part of the Dead Sea Works franchise and is not open to the public, is now in danger.
One enters via P88, a vast, abandoned hulk of rusting iron — a perfect prop for a dystopian movie about the end of the universe. P88 once served as a pumping station for the Dead Sea Works mineral extraction company until the shoreline receded and left it isolated on land. A new station, P9, was subsequently constructed closer to the water.
Beyond is the bay, its harsh, crackle-under-foot shoreline providing an open-air exhibition of salt formations. Unless an alternative is approved, the bay will be used to dump tons of salt being scraped off the bottom of the factory’s largest mineral evaporation pool. Last month, Prof.
Zohar Gvirtzman, head of the state’s Israel Geological Survey, told a conference at the Dead Sea that piling salt at Tzeelim Bay would create a salt mountain in six years that would be not only visible from Masada — an ancient mountaintop fortification of great symbolic importance to Jews — but would be as tall. “We want to save P88 and the bay,” he said. Like its Jordanian counterpart on the eastern shore, Dead Sea Works pumps water uphill from the sea into vast ponds.
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