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From Globes
JNF promotes six green wastewater treatment projects
The projects use only the natural wetland vegetation to purify wastewater.
Dalia Tal, 21 Aug 07 16:10
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is developing six projects using wetlands to treat wastewater. The projects are at Lutan, Neot Smadar, and Dimona in the Negev, the Yarkon River and Alexander River in the coastal plain, and the Hula Valley in the Galilee. Some projects are already operating.
The projects use only the natural wetland vegetation to purify wastewater without added energy, which pollutes the environment. In contrast to conventional chemical wastewater treatment, no sludge is produced, which then has to be safely disposed.
Israel has a chronic water shortage, with almost 2/3 of its area desert and rainfall only during the winter months - between November and March. Rapid population growth and rising living standards have compounded this shortage, while increasingly frequent drought years since the ‘80s have lowered fresh water reserves to critically dangerous levels.
In recent years JNF has been helping to alleviate the national water shortage by:
- Building 180 water reservoirs and dams across Israel with a combined storage capacity of more than 34 billion gallons of water, freeing up enough water to meet the needs of over 1.2 million Israelis each year and equivalent to over 11% of Israel’s average annual water consumption;
- Some of these reservoirs serve to store fresh surface run off, which would otherwise be lost to the sea, for irrigation and to enrich underground aquifers;
- A growing number of these reservoirs serve as storage facilities for treated waste water which is recycled for irrigation;
- The recycling of waste water prevents the flow of concentrated raw sewage over Israel’s countryside with the accompanying danger of its percolating down and polluting underground aquifers and its ultimate flow to the sea, thus preventing serious environmental damage;
- The recycling of purified sewage effluents is also a major contribution toward the continued existence of irrigated farming in Israel where fresh water supplies are so scarce;
- Reviving Israel’s river ways, together with the Ministry of the Environment and the River Rehabilitation Authority, by dredging them of accumulated debris and polluted sediments, repairing sluggish flow and stabilizing embankments against soil erosion with tree and shrub plantings, thus transforming them from ecological hazards into refreshing green belts.
