32°38′00″N 35°34′07″E / 32.6334°N 35.5687°E
The First Jordan Hydro-Electric Power House, also known as the Rutenberg Power Station or the Naharayim Power Plant or the Tel Or Power Plant, was a conventional dammed hydroelectric power station on the Jordan river, which operated between 1932 and 1948. It was situated in the Emirate of Transjordan (modern Jordan), but built to supply power to Mandatory Palestine (modern Israel). The plant was built in an area known as Jisr el-Majami, later renamed by Pinhas Rutenberg's Palestine Electric Corporation as Naharayim, and following the Israel–Jordan peace treaty it is today part of the Jordanian area of Baqoura.
The plant was constructed – under concession from the Mandatory government – by the Palestine Electric Corporation based on a plan put forward in 1926. It followed his original 1920 Rutenberg plan to build ten reservoirs and fourteen hydroelectric plants on the Jordan river.[1][2] Financial capital for the project came from the worldwide Jewish community, organized with limited publicity in order to allow Rutenberg to be presented as an "entrepreneur" rather than part of the Zionist Organization.[3]
- ^ Sofer, Arnon (1999). Rivers of Fire: The Conflict Over Water in the Middle East. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-8476-8511-0.
- ^ Reguer 1995, pp. 692.
- ^ Smith 1993, pp. 118–121.