February 2, 2018
CapitalPress.com
5
Israel develops water-conscious culture
Alon Melamed, irrigation
manager at Kibbutz Kinneret,
discusses water conserva-
tion.
By SHERYL HARRIS
For the Capital Press
Kibbutz Kinneret
Kibbutz Kinnert
Crop covers do more than provide shade. They also help with
water conservation and fruit longevity.
Israelis work on the collective
farm, which grows a variety of
crops and operates a dairy. Wa-
ter conservation education may
officially begin in kindergarten,
but it also begins long before
that because of what children
see in the home, he said.
Israel has a multi-faceted
strategy for water: production,
conservation, technology and
reuse.
In 2010 the nation drilled
three wells to tap aquifers near-
ly a mile deep. Once treated to
remove the naturally occurring
caustic compounds, the water
extends plant and fish seasons,
irrigates vineyards and crops,
increases the Jordan River’s
flow and raises the level of the
Sea of Galilee.
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Five of the world’s largest
desalination plants are in Israel,
providing 35 percent of its wa-
ter. They use a process called
reverse osmosis to convert wa-
ter from the Mediterranean Sea
into potable water. An Israeli
company, IDE Technologies,
also designed and built the
Western Hemisphere’s largest
desalination plant, near Carls-
bad, Calif. It provides 50 mil-
lion gallons of fresh water a day
to the San Diego County Water
Authority, supplying 7 percent
of its needs.
Almost 90 percent of Is-
rael’s wastewater is recycled,
providing about half of what is
required for agriculture. Re-
claimed water is also used for
industry.
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W18-4/106
Israel knows water. Or,
more accurately, the nation
perched in one of the driest
regions of the world has de-
veloped cutting-edge ways of
dealing with a lack of water.
From developing ways to
conserve water to building
some of the largest desalina-
tion plants in the world to con-
vert sea water into drinking
water, Israeli engineers have
developed innovative ways to
produce and reuse its most pre-
cious resource.
Israel is about the size of
New Jersey. About one-third
of its land is arable. Within that
area, it receives about as much
rain as Arizona, about 15 inches
a year.
For Americans, water is the
elephant in the living room.
“Water is such a crucial issue,
and nobody is talking about
it” in the U.S., said Jewish Na-
tional Fund Communications
Director Adam Brill. The fund
raises money to develop reser-
voirs that supply about 10 per-
cent of Israel’s water.
To provide water for the
nation’s 8.5 million people and
the farms that grow their food,
Israelis have developed a na-
tional infrastructure to manage
the resource.
Israel has only one water
authority: the national gov-
ernment. Because of its single
water authority, Israel is able
to use a nationwide system to
deliver water from reserves and
treatment plants to where it is
needed.
Water is also priced to re-
flect its value and the cost of
maintaining and monitoring
pipelines. The price of potable
water is $7.70 for 100 cubic
feet. That’s nearly 10 times the
price of water in Las Vegas, an-
other desert area.
Another important compo-
nent is education. “Our children
are our most important ‘crop,’”
said Alon Melamed, irrigation
manager at Kibbutz Kinneret
in northern Israel. Nearly 700
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