Subscribe to Print Edition | Wed., November 19, 2008 Cheshvan 21, 5769 | | Israel Time: 01:19 (EST+7)   Back to Homepage web haaretz.com Haaretz Toolbar Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Car Rental Books Haaretz Magazine Business Real Estate GA 2008 Travel Week's End Anglo File

The half-empty glass By Avirama Golan Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra found a brilliant solution this week to the water shortage problem. Inmates in prisons, said the minister, don't have anything to do, so they take showers. They should take fewer showers. Ezra is not alone. For several months now the government has been threatening to restrict private water consumption: Gardens will no longer be irrigated, showers will be shorter by order, and the wasteful will be fined. "Emergency Situation" is Israel's other name. Every time the government is caught in its ineffectiveness, they pull this out of the drawer. However, in the area of water there is no need for this. As long ago as 1999, the government declared that the situation was an "emergency situation" and even decided to take urgent measures. The government's first step back then, after it was persuaded that the root of the evil was water quotas for farmers, was to halve these quotas. It took water from the fields and transferred it to the homes, and announced that it was possible to breathe easily: It isn't true that there is no water, they said at the Finance Ministry. There is water, but the farmers waste it. Look, we've taken some away from them and we're doing fine. Advertisement This is a deception. Professional committees (the Nebenzahl committee in 1966 and the Magen committee in 2002) that deliberated the water shortage have indeed determined that wheeler-dealers and lobbyists from the agricultural sector caused serious damage to agriculture, to farmers and to society as a whole when they behaved irresponsibly in managing the water economy and agricultural planning, but pointed toward restrictions on the use of water in agriculture as a "flexible reserve." The real gap between the means of accumulating water reserves and the erratic rainfall, and the level of consumption (which is growing because of natural population growth and the rise in the standard of living), has grown constantly. The reasons for this are complex. Water management in Israel is clumsy, and to this day it has not been delineated via uniform legislation, but rather remains the domain of various and sundry laws and regulations, which touch on settlement and land use. The water commissioner's authority is vague (the establishment of the Water Authority has not solved this), the planning body has been privatized and has dwindled, and the national Mekorot water company is collapsing. In its day, the Nebenzahl committee warned of over-pumping that causes the salination of wells, and that the stock of water (in the reservoirs and from rainfall) would not suffice for more than two years. Since then private consumption has increased by a factor of 2.5, and in response the Knesset established an investigation committee. When an emergency situation was declared in 1999, the quantity of water in Israel's reserves - Lake Kinneret and the aquifers - was greater by 480 million cubic meters than it is today. At that time the government instructed the ministers of infrastructure, finance and the interior to carry out checks and to plan desalinization plants, set aside land for them and approve a national master plan for desalinization. The decision even noted explicitly the rate of desalinization - 400 million cubic meters annually. In parallel, it was decided to maximize the use of "gray water" - purified waste water - in agriculture, in place of potable water. Recently the government took another decision: This time, to issue a tender for the desalinization by the BOT (build-operate-transfer) method - private investment with a government guarantee. Of all this, practically nothing has been implemented. On the contrary: The leasing fees that the Israel Lands Administration now charges to the gray water reservoirs are so high as to make them not economically viable, while the Finance Ministry has increased the price for purified waste water supplied by Mekorot to agriculture, and the price of this water is now the same as the price of potable water. Desalinization is being carried out at the rate of only 130 million cubic meters annually, and the overpumping is continuing. Even if now all the agricultural lands, which constitute a little more than one-fifth of the country's land area (including the Golan Heights), all the parks and all the gardens - and also the prisoners' showers - are dried out, the shortage will only get worse. Instead of threatening restrictions, the government should implement its decisions. However, this is not enough: Only with a comprehensive planning outlook that addresses both land and water - as well as sophisticated agriculture, population distribution, regularizing the water economy, desalinization, wastewater purification and controlled pumping - will the necessary correction occur. Excessive construction of individual homes surrounded by private land, a crowded road system and obsolescing agriculture that relies on a political lobby - these and other wasteful practices are using up the water and thinning out the land. Israel is located along a coastline, but behind it the desert is breathing down its nape. Without a sober planning policy, of which water is only one of the elements, Israel's natural resources will come to an end. Water will continue to flow only from the mouths of cabinet ministers. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Iran arrests blogger Hossein Derakhshan admitted to spying for Israel, claims Iranian Web site. Peace through sport Jewish and Arab youngsters are finding common ground through Hand in Hand.

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