A half full or half empty glass of water in Israel?

May 19, 2011 - 8:58 AM by David

RED LINE ALERT: Israel's main water supply, the Kinneret

Usually by May, whatever rain we’ve received in Israel over the winter has ceased, and the skies are clear for the next six months or so. This year, however, has been a weather smorgasbord of showers mixed with sand storms amid chilly days followed by sultry heat.

The extra dirty rain hasn’t really helped fill our depleted water sources however. The national Water Authority said that due to the six consecutive years of drought-like rainfall, the country is currently missing close to one billion cubic meters of water, and still have not achieved an average amount of precipitation this year. By the end of April, Israel had still only accumulated 89 percent of the average rainfall, a report from the authority said.

Uri Schor, the spokesman for the Authority told The Jerusalem Post that “the situation in the water reserves of Israel – the Kinneret, the mountain and coastal aquifers – is still very, very critical. We will be under the red line this summer in all three main reserves.”

Sounds pretty dire, as TV ads regularly warn us to save water, and many lawns are left to wilt in a patriotic move by some home owners to do their part. However, a different take on the water crisis was provided this week by Prof. Uri Shani, until a few months ago, the head of the Water Authority and now a professor at Hebrew University.

He told Channel 2 news that due to the country’s progress in desalinization, and an increase in this year’s rainfall, there is no longer a crisis.

“I can say with caution that the water crisis has ended,” Shani, now a professor at the Hebrew University’s Department of Water and Soil Sciences, told Channel 2. “The main reason is not the rain of course, it is the desalinization facilities that Israel is building at perhaps the greatest speed in the world. Also, the recent water conservation practices of Israel, together with the important – although small – boost that the rain has provided us, has helped us reach an era in which we don’t have a water crisis.

“Until the end of winter, we were in a situation where we were afraid of a much more severe drought, and prepared a series of emergency Draconian steps, such as the prohibition of watering gardens,” he continued. “Today it is possible to say that this will not be forbidden. The existential danger from an unprecedented lack of water no longer exists.”

The Authority’s spokesman Schor hedged Shani’s optimism a bit, saying “we are definitely on the right track by now: we already have three huge desalinization plants that produce an amount of water that is equivalent to 40% of the total water that is going to households and cities, and by the end of 2013 we will desalinate a quantity of water that will reach approximately 70%. But we are still lacking huge amounts of water, and we will be between the red and the black line in the water reserves.”

Regardless of whether we believe Shani’s or Schor’s spin on the situation is a matter of whether you consider the glass half full or half empty. Either way, we only have half a glass of water, so I wouldn’t suggest heading out to water your lawn yet.

Share with others