Broken sewer pipe taints water, weekend in Eilat - Haaretz

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Mon., October 01, 2007 ,

Israel Time: 02:28 (EST+7)

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Broken sewer pipe taints water, weekend in Eilat

By Zafrir Rinat, Irit Rosenblum and Zvika Gottlieb

Beaches in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat were closed to swimmers early yesterday after damage to the main sewer pipe carrying waste from the hotel area led to large amounts of untreated sewage being dumped into the sea.

Last night vacationers left Eilat's hotels, as they do at the end of every weekend. According to the general manager of the Eilat Hotel Association, Shabtai Shay, the outflow of tourists was not connected to the pollution of the city's beaches.

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He said he was not aware of any early checkouts resulting from the beach closures, adding that there had been no cancellations for today due to the incident. "It's an unpleasant situation, but most visitors use the hotel pools rather than the beach, and in any event they always have that option," Shay said.

Public health experts said that exposure to the tainted water could cause bacterial meningitis as well as infections of the eyes and the respiratory and digestive systems.

This week was to have marked a milestone in waste treatment in Israel, with the opening of Acre's new sewage facility. Acre was one of the last coastal cities still pouring raw sewage into the Mediterranean.

The spillage in Eilat, however, spoiled the party. It was a reminder that despite progress in the area of waste treatment, there is still a chronic, across-the-board failure to properly maintain the country's existing treatment facilities.

Similar incidents have occurred in the past two months in Tiberias, which led to waste streaming into Lake Kinneret, and in Mediterranean-coast communities including Netanya, Beit Yannai and Herzliya. In other locales around the country, streams, springs and underground aquifers have been damaged seriously by pollution. Less than two weeks ago, the Kishon River was contaminated when a sewer pipe in Kiryat Ata was damaged.

"I'm not swimming, only sitting on the beach tanning and reading a book," said Miriam, 24, of Jerusalem. She came with friends for a vacation.

"I'm not planning to go into the water, and neither are my friends. This morning we thought about going in but then we found out it was polluted. The lifeguards constantly announce that bathing is prohibited but some people go in anyway, probably foreign tourists who don't understand Hebrew," she said.

Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevy said yesterday: "I want to hope and believe the beaches will open tomorrow. We sent samples for testing; I hope the results will show that the beaches are clean and ready for vacationers tomorrow morning."

Officials at the Ein Netafim company, which is in charge of the city's sewer system, said that about 500 cubic meters of sewage were diverted into the Red Sea when a main line broke, adding that the dumping was necessary for repair of the pipe.

"Not a lot can be done, we don't expect anything to change as a result of the incident," said the Eilat District director of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, Guy Alon. "The damage can't be measured; the coral reef has been under stress for years."

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