The water level of the Kinneret, Israel's largest freshwater reservoir, is just 214.38 meters below sea level – about two meters lower that it was a year ago at this time, and only two feet above the absolute minimum.
Increase Desalination Five-Fold or More
Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) met with water economy officials this week and instructed them to prepare to absorb 750 million cubic meters of desalinated water by the year 2016. Israel currently desalinates 135 million cubic meters of water each year
Last year, the government approved a gargantuan desalination program - 600 million annual cubic meters by 2013, and 750 million cubic meters by 2020. Ben-Eliezer now says the pace is likely to be stepped up. “If the drought continues,” he warned, “you should even prepare for a billion.”
Though the rainy season should now be at its height, the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is not rising steadily, and has climbed only five centimeters in the past month. In comparison, it increased 16 centimeters in each of the last two Januaries. Each centimeter of height represents 1.7 million cubic meters of water.
Next week, the Mekorot National Water Company will stop drawing water from the Kinneret for a period of a month – not because of the crisis, but in order to connect the National Water Carrier to the waters of the Hadera desalination plant. The Hadera plant is scheduled, by the end of 2009, to start delivering 100 million cubic meters of desalinated water each year - via an 80-inch-wide pipeline.
Israel and Jordan
According to the peace treaty that Israel and Jordan signed in 1994, Israel agrees to allow Jordan to draw roughly 50 million cubic meters of water each year from the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers.
By law, water authorities are not allowed to draw water from the Kinneret if it drops to a low of 215 meters below sea level. Originally, this line was at 213 meters below sea level, known as the red line. It marks the minimum level at which drawing water would not cause harm to the reservoir.
The 215-meter level is known as the black line, and marks the level at which, if water is drawn, certain damage is caused to water sources.
Sudden Decision Allows Two More Meters of Drawing
This past July, with the water level decreasing at an alarming rate, the Water Authority made the unusual decision to allow water to be drawn even below the red line – though not below the black line.
The Kinneret, Israel's only sweet water lake in Israel, supplies nearly a third of Israel's water needs. Most of the remainder is supplied by the mountain aquifer in Judea and Samaria and the coastal aquifer, just off the Mediterranean coast.
Only Solution: Desalination
Many water experts say that water conservation by residents could save tens of millions of cubic meters of water each year, and that campaigns to this effect should be run. "However," one official said, "in reality, we are not short tens of millions, but rather hundreds of millions. Therefore, desalination is the only real solution."
Of the 135 million cubic meters of water currently desalinated yearly, 100 million come from the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant, in Ashkelon, and the remainder are processed at Palmachim. The Hadera plant is scheduled to provide another 100 million each year, and a tender for a third 100-million plant in Ashdod is about to be issued. The Ashkelon plant's production is around 13% of the country's domestic consumer demand, or 5–6% of Israel's total water needs.