Greens trying to reverse environmental plague in Arab towns

Green groups are working on reversing a long-term trend of Israeli-Arab towns being plagued by environmental hazards, in part by spurring residents to pressure municipal governments to take action.

Local authorities also appear to be getting in on the action. Local leaders met last week to sign a "contract with the environment," which delineates environmental commitments undertaken by the local authorities, at the Council for a Beautiful Israel building in Tel Aviv.

However, Union of Local Authorities chairman Adi Eldar, who is also mayor of Carmiel, said the municipalities' ability to uphold the commitments may not be uniform. "I was referring to the Arab local authorities," he said. "In our city we act to preserve the environment, but on the other side of the highway, among our neighbors in the Arab areas, rivers of sewage are flowing."

Arab towns have become a focal point of environmental hazards partly as a result of budgetary difficulties there and a lack of investment in infrastructure. The situation has become worse in recent years, when many Arab towns have been in the throes of economic and administrative crises.

At last week's ceremony, Eldar proposed allocating a special budget for solving the environmental problems in Arab local authorities - but groups like LINK to the Environment, an Arab-Jewish non-profit organization active in Nazareth, are focusing on encouraging grassroots action.

"Of course, the involvement of the central and local government is also necessary - but the citizen has to play a major role," says LINK director Badria Biromi-Kandaleft.

There is no point in waiting for external change like increased government involvement before residents begin improving the environmental reality, she says. Instead, she advocates expanding environmental awareness and pressuring local politicians. In an effort to increase environmental awareness among Israeli Arabs, LINK has initiated meetings with residents and local authority officials aimed at creating environmental agendas in every Arab town.

Biromi-Kandaleft says low rates of municipal tax collection negatively affect the authorities' ability to maintain environmental infrastructures, but argues that the municipal taxes levied in Arab towns must yield significant profits for the local authorities.

"Employment zones and real estate initiatives are needed for the municipal tax to be an economic tool for the local authority," she says.

One of the LINK's projects, called Garages for the Environment, targets garage owners in the north.

"We persuaded about 140 garage owners in the Galilee not to pour oil into the waste purification system, where it causes damage, but rather to treat it," says Biromi-Kandaleft. "One of our biggest successes has been in Kafr Manda, a poor area with high rates of unemployment. This succeeded to a large extent thanks to the cooperation of one of the employees of the local council."

Other green groups increasingly involved in efforts to improve the environment in Arab towns include the Galilee-based Arab Center for Alternative Planning, a partner in the first initiative of its kind for mapping environmental hazards. It aims to use the mapping of the Arab city of Tamra as a database for dealing with the various hazards.

Although environmental groups argue that neglect of the environment largely stems from the residents' lack of awareness of the relevant issues, they are also conscious of what they describe as the local leaders' corruption and inefficiency.

Sometimes, local officials are unsuccessful even when they try to make improvements. For instance, although the head of the environmental unit for Arab towns in the northern region of Wadi Ara has established a site in Umm al-Fahm for the collection of dry waste like tree trimmings and building materials, the site remains empty most of the time and piles of waste accumulate in the forests around the city - evidence of many residents' indifference and lack of awareness.

The budgetary problems and lack of infrastructure hit Arab towns after a number of years during which the state had begun to invest in infrastructure and sewage treatment. The result has been that in a number of local authorities, there are pumps to extract the sewage, the pipes are ready and there is even a treatment center. However, all of these collapse because the towns don't have the funds to maintain them.

A grim computerized presentation prepared by Zacharia Naxon from the Galilee town of Tsurit was recently distributed to environmental activists. By means of maps and pictures, Naxon demonstrates how one of the most beautiful areas of Israel has become an open sewer and garbage dump. Naxon documents pirate dumping grounds, accumulations of junked vehicle parts and tires and sewage inundating the nature reserve in Nahal Beit Hakerem. He notes that in a number of places, local residents are digging deep pits. They sell the soil for private gardens and the pit fills up with waste, which they burn every day to reduce the volume.

"The smoke from burning the waste is poisoning the residents of the towns and villages, and the sewage channels have become a fantastic natural habitat for mosquitoes that carry the virus for West Nile Fever," writes Naxon. "Complaints that have been filed about smoke have thus far made no impression on the enforcement authorities or the transgressors. These failures have been going on for years now, endangering our lives and embarrassing us and our guests."

These blights are not only the lot of outlying parts of the country, which the government tends to neglect, though that is probably no consolation for Naxon. The central segment of the Trans-Israel Highway is surrounded by piles of waste, sewage streams and blocked drainage channels. This is the direct result of the inadequate treatment of waste and sewage in the adjacent areas, particularly the Israeli Arab city of Taibeh, and of residents' failure to comply with planning, construction and drainage laws.

The sewage problem

The CEO of Derech Eretz Highways, Ehud Savyon, sounds nearly desperate when he talks about the hazards that create a danger to the highway infrastructures. He displays dozens of letters to the environmental protection minister, the drainage authorities, the National Sewage Administration and other bodies, thus far to no avail.

Savyon told the Environmental Protection Ministry in a letter last year that local landowners have blocked the natural drainage channels of the Alexander River and its tributaries with waste or for illegal construction. Derech Eretz also told the ministry the residents have prevented attempts to open the drainage channels threatening to flood or destabilize the highway.

The problems have been exacerbated since the sewage of the city of Taibeh continues to flow in the direction of the stream channels. There has been no elected mayor there for several years now because of financial and administrative problems. The appointees who have been running it on behalf of the Interior Ministry have not succeeded until recently in rehabilitating collapsing infrastructures.

Two months ago a special symposium on the environmental problems in the Arab local authorities was held at the Knesset, ahead of which the Knesset prepared a background document on the situation there, at the request of MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al). The document describes how the economic crisis caused the collapse of the garbage collection system in the Arab local authorities. First the authority stops paying the contractor who had collected the waste in an orderly way. Then the garbage piles up at the collection stations at the edges of the locales, and then it is burned. Afterward, the frustrated residents act on their own to burn the piles of garbage that accumulate near their homes.

The government has tried to deal with the sewage problem by establishing water and sewage corporations into which Arab areas would be integrated. The establishment of a corporation is supposed to bypass the economic problems because it is meant to ensure the transfer of funds for a specific purpose, rather than for the other expenses of debt-ridden local authorities. However, the process of establishing these corporations is moving ahead slowly, and some well-off local authorities are refusing to enter into partnership with areas that are sunk in debt. This is the case with Jaljulya, a fairly well-administered town that has not wanted to be a partner in the same corporation as Taibeh.

Environmental awareness in Arab towns could well become more important over the next few years, thanks to the successful development of environmental education in the schools. This month the education and environmental protection ministries announced that this is the year of "green education."

Environmental Protection Ministry figures indicate that 200 schools in Israel provide courses in environmental studies, and that a quarter of these schools are in Arab towns. Perhaps these are the students who will one day lead the local governments in their towns - at which point one may hope that they will no longer need to receive explanations of the importance of preventing waste and sewage hazards.