Nostalgia Sunday – Mekorot’s water portfolio

April 19, 2009 - 8:02 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday 

To celebrate Tel Aviv’s Centennial anniversary, Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, has dug into its photo archive and released images from the construction of the Tel Aviv water pipeline project. Check out the kovaei tembel, the soft cloth hats that once symbolized the Israeli pioneer worker.

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These images are from 1963. The original Western Pipeline – Yarkon-Negev Plant pipeline was completed in 1955 but as Tel Aviv’s population grew, along with demand for water, it was decided to add the additional Dan pipeline to boost the water supply. The project was completed in the mid-60s.

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Today, Mekorot is considered one of the world’s most technologically advanced water companies and a world leader in desalination, water reclamation, water project engineering, water safety, water security and water quality. Its all-important task is formulating and implementing the country’s national water policy.

mekorot_24-10-1963

Over the past 12 months, Mekorot has embarked on a number of major projects, including the construction of a fifth pipeline to Jerusalem…

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…construction of the desalination facility in Ashdod with a capacity of 100 million cubic meters a year and linking of the desalination facilities along the coastline — such as the world’s largest such plant at Ashkelon, pictured here — with the national water system…

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…plus other projects aimed at increasing the supply of water, for example, cloud seeding in the winter months. Mekorot has engaged in “rain-enhancement” for over 45 years and has managed to increase the annual rainfall in the Sea of Galilee catchment by 13%-18%.

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Mekorot facilities have visitors centers with guided tours. As for the archive, it isn’t presently online but give them time. And, given their technological edge, it will be amazing to think of what pictures Mekorot will release when Tel Aviv’s 200th rolls along.

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Israel runs dry

July 8, 2008 - 2:59 PM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: General, Life, Politics 

Uh Oh. Israel’s in a water crisis. On Monday, the water level of Lake Kinneret, Israel’s main reservoir, fell below the red line, and today former head of the Water Commission, Dan Zaslavsky, warned that Israel’s faucets could run dry by mid-summer.

Sounds serious right? So why hasn’t anyone done anything about this up to now?

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As a Brit turned Israeli, this is something I find a little hard to understand.

Back when I lived in the rainy wet UK, not a summer used to go by without some kind of hosepipe ban. The rivers would be full, the reservoirs seemingly flush with water, but the government said there was a drought, so our hosepipe’s went off, and the grass would turn brown, and our gardens wilt. I remember summer after summer watering the garden with our bathwater.

Here in Israel, however, a country where it doesn’t rain for almost six months of the year, and where this year in particular, winter with its heavy rains just didn’t come, water conservation is a topic that seems to extend no further than the op-ed pages.

Israel is in a serious water crisis. Pumping from the Kinneret will have to stop soon, and we still have the worst of the summer to come. Water supplies will be cut to towns that receive water from the National Water carrier, agriculture will be badly hit, and damage could be substantial.

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Everyone saw this coming, but nothing significant was done to stop it. What about desalination plants, what about an education campaign for Israel’s public, what about a little forethought for heaven’s sake? Come on. This is the country that invented drip irrigation.

“We need to pray for a serious rainy winter,” Shuli Chen, the Water Commission official who has been measuring the Kinneret’s level for the last eight years (now there’s a job…), told a local Israeli paper. “An average winter won’t suffice. If there is not a serious flow of water into the Kinneret this winter, our situation will be very bad.”

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