Water from Washington

For centuries, the people of Jerusalem and Bethlehem have struggled to slake their thirst from the waters of Solomon's Pools--a chronically inadequate reservoir system eight miles south of Jerusalem. When a severe drought early this year indicated that even Solomon's skimpy source would be dry by late summer, Jordan's plucky little King Hussein braced himself for bloody water riots that have broken out during previous droughts. Then, in April, Central Water Authority Director Oliver Folsom, 53. a burly California irrigation expert on loan to Jordan from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), produced an idea. He proposed to hustling U.S. Ambassador in Amman William B. Macomber Jr. that the impending water shortage could be avoided by feeding Solomon's Pools from a big new well at Hebron--if a pipeline could be laid on short notice across the 18 mountainous miles that lay between the source and the thirst.

Macomber went right to work. After a hasty survey, he sent an urgent cable to the Department of State in Washington requesting permission and supplies, emphasizing: "We must move quickly." In ten days, Macomber's request was approved and the necessary pipe located. Ten thousand sections of water pipe from the Normandy invasion had been carefully preserved in an Army warehouse in France since 1945. Army supply officers managed to catch a German freighter sailing for the Jordanian port of Aqaba. and 36 hours after the pipe had landed, Water Authority trucks had dropped the sections all the way from Hebron to the Pools. Working around the clock in the desert heat. Jordan army engineers connected the pipe at the rate of more than two miles a day while Folsom's Water Authority was installing pumps and a supplementary well at Hebron.

Last week, right on schedule, Hebron water gurgled out of the pipe into the Pools of Solomon. Returning from a six-week trip abroad. King Hussein was amazed: "I never thought water would be flowing to the people before I got back." The people of Jerusalem were even more startled to find the faucets running. "A miracle!'' exclaimed Jerusalem Mayor Rawhi Khatib. Weary Ambassador Macomber passed his praise along to Washington: "That old foreign aid program gets kicked around the lot, but this time we really hit a home run.''

*Ecclesiastes 2:6, often attributed to Solomon, says: "I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared."

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