The Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty includes an agreement on water. The annex details short-term projects for the storage of the unregulated flow of Yarmouk and Jordan waters for use by the kingdom, lays out regulations for rehabilitating Jordan river water and for protecting the quality of shared water resources for both states. A joint water committee will be created to implement the agreement. According to Jordan's chief delegate to the water talks, Munther Haddadin, the water situation has reached a critical point. Evidence of this came on May 10, when the state-run Water Authority introduced tough water rationing.
Water is a scarce and dwindling resource in Jordan.
The total amount of rain water that falls on the country is estimated at 8,000m cu metres per year, almost ten times more than the needs of Jordan's 4.2m population. Before the 1967 influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, which took the population level well beyond 1 million, there were a number of oases, springs and streams on which people could depend for water for agriculture and domestic consumption. However, these have long since dried out. Treated wastewater amounted to 52m cu metres. The water-supply problem is further aggravated because some of the already scarce water supplies are in jeopardy.