It will be difficult to meet projected water demand for 2008 if next winter's rainfall levels are similar to those of last winter, said the head of the Water Authority Council, Prof. Uri Shani.

Lecturing at the Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot last week, Shani warned that Israel's water problems will worsen significantly in the coming years unless the production of desalinated water rises sharply. The lecture was not intended for media coverage.

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In the wake of Shani's warnings, the cabinet voted yesterday to increase water desalination in Israel by 275 million cubic meters by 2013, bringing the total annual production of desalinated water to 505 million cubic meters by that time, representing one-fourth of the country's water consumption.

"The drop in water supply derives from atmospheric contamination, which affects cloud composition and causes a drop in rainfall levels," Shani said after the cabinet meeting. "Every year we record less water entering Lake Kinneret in the winter. Another factor in the drop in water supply is contamination of the coastal aquifer, which reduces the amount of water that can be pumped out."

The last drought in Israel lasted from 1999 to 2002. The main lesson was to have been the implementation of a system based on producing large quantities of desalinated water, reducing demand by saving water, and avoiding a situation in which the amount of water pumped out exceeds the amount of rainwater that replenishes the country's water sources.

In practice, this year hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water in excess of rainfall amounts were pumped, and the levels of groundwater (in the Mountain Aquifer and Coastal Aquifer) as well as Lake Kinneret fell.

According to the Water Authority's latest figures, the Mountain Aquifer dropped by one meter from the previous year.

Three months ago the authority's operating committee made several decisions on water pumping policy. Participants agreed there is a serious likelihood that water levels in Israel's reservoirs will fall below the "red lines," something that has not occurred for the past five years. That would create a permanent risk of groundwater salinization and reduction in the Kinneret's water quality.

The accepted policy in such situations is to pump less water and impose water-use restrictions on various sectors. Shani said it may be necessary to reduce water allocations for agriculture next year.

Environmental organizations and water experts criticized the Water Authority for making the construction of expensive, new water desalination plants its main answer to the water crisis, rather than investing in water-saving measures.

Shani says that water-saving methods have helped to reduce per-capita water use in the past 10 years from 115 cubic meters to 103 cubic meters. "Clearly there is a need for heightened effort in this direction," Shani said after the cabinet meeting.