The Jordan River, which runs for 62 miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, is one of the most historically and culturally rich places in the world. Christ was baptized in its waters and companions of the Prophet Mohammed were buried along its banks. Remnants of the first settlers, from 10,000 years ago, still decorate the landscape.

But what was once a grand river is now disappearing at an astonishingly fast rate, said Gidon Bromberg, Israel director of the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth Middle East, at a Monday discussion hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

"This is a site that is truly holy to half of humanity," Bromberg said. Now, he added, the river is in a very dire strait.

In the last 50 years, the river has lost almost 97 percent of its annual water flow, with a drop from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters of water per year to less than 100 million cubic meters, according to the environmental group.

Water scarcity in a region where countries compete to sustain growing populations is the source of the problem, Bromberg said. Israel first began using water from the river in the late 1950s, with a National Water Carrier that diverted millions of cubic meters of water from the Sea of Galilee. Then neighboring countries Syria and Jordan constructed major dams upstream to collect water for themselves.

Bromberg said that today Israel, Syria and Jordan divert more than 90 percent of the river's fresh water for domestic and agricultural uses. "Not a drop of fresh water leaves the Sea of Galilee," he said.

A new dam on the Yarmouk, one of the main water sources to the river, will prevent another 20 million cubic meters of water from flowing to the Dead Sea, Bromberg warned.

"In some summers the Jordan River has already stopped to flow," he said. "The Lower Jordan will simply not flow after the completion of the last dam."

Munqeth Mehyar, chairman of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said the disastrous effects of water loss are already visible in the region, which he describes as having surpassed its carrying capacity.

The water level of the Dead Sea, Mehyar said, continues to decrease by 3.3 feet every year, as it has for the last 15 years.

Worse still, the environmentalists said, the Jordan River has been reduced to a sewage channel. Bromberg said the river is so polluted that it is a health hazard and people cannot even wade in the waters.

The river, which throughout history has been a source of contention between Jordan, Israel and Palestine, has unified politicians from the three states in an effort to prevent its disappearance.

At the discussion Monday, Friends of the Earth Middle East brought together five mayors from Jordan, Israel and Palestine to urge their respective governments to rehabilitate the area.

"It is not every day you find this group sitting on one table together," Mehyar said.

During the meeting, the mayors and representatives of the environmentalist group discussed potential solutions, including placing the Jordan River Valley on the UNESCO World Heritage list and constructing a canal between the Red and Dead seas to increase water levels.

Before any plans can be finalized, however, the environmental implications must be studied, Bromberg said. One of the largest concerns is the effect of mixing Red Sea and Dead Sea water, because the latter has a unique mineral composition.

The challenges in rehabilitating the river are heavy tasks for those involved, particularly given the history of conflict between Jordan, Israel and Palestine, but the mayors said they were optimistic about working together to develop a solution.

"Despite the political problems we are facing," said Dov Litvinoff, mayor of an Israeli town, "the leaders are on one mission: The River Jordan, the Dead Sea facing ecological catastrophe."

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