Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World

by Seth M. Siegel

“The quality of the reclaimed water is now so high and the price is so low that farmers are constantly asking us to increase their allocation of treated water,”

Getting rid of subsidies, she says, will lead to smarter crop selection, use of innovation and technology in irrigation, and most important, more efficient use of water.34

Israel was the first in the world to adopt the mandatory use of dual-flush toilets,36 a device claimed to have been invented in Israel.

With Israel’s raw sewage being the least diluted, most dense, sewage found anywhere in the developed world, Israel’s wastewater facilities operate at high rates of efficiency, not needing to treat excess water as is the case with the ordinarily highly diluted sewage usually found in other countries’ sewage and most especially in the US.

On average, about ninety percent of every pill swallowed—but never less than seventy percent—is excreted a short time later.50

These pioneering scientists are trying to figure out not just what happens to the hormone in a birth control pill once it gets passed to the wastewater-treatment plant, but also how that compound may change when it is mixed with antibiotics or with any of the thousands of different pills or personal care products that are now found in wastewater everywhere in the world.

“If an individual compound is dangerous in isolation, we don’t know if it becomes dangerous or completely breaks down when exposed to sunlight or what the effect of different temperatures might be,”

Already, MemTech, a membrane company based on the invention of two professors from the Technion, has developed a means for filtering pharmaceutical molecules at the nano level from municipal wastewater.57

With reclaimed water as an added resource, the country can better withstand a drought without overtaxing its natural water supply.

Israel is the only country in the world which has less area covered by desert today than fifty years ago.

If the farmers of a generation ago received heavily subsidized freshwater, but complained that there was too little of it, this generation of Israeli farmers have all of the water they want from natural or alternative sources, but are concerned that the price they will have to pay will make their produce unaffordable in the world market.62 Israel’s water planners are betting that the cost will bring yet more efficiency to the nation’s farms, and that it will, in turn, spur yet more new Israeli innovation and technology.

Today, the country’s rivers are cleaner. Israeli pollution of the Mediterranean is significantly reduced, and soon to get even more so.63 And Israel’s aquifers are at less risk of contamination. Along the way, Israel developed a parallel water supply that may not be ideal for drinking or bathing, but which can be used safely in agriculture.

Regardless of climate, every country produces great amounts of sewage.

wanted to push the day out as far as possible. Second, we still weren’t using enough of our treated sewage for agriculture. I didn’t want to do anything that would discourage that. And third, I was pretty sure our farmers were picking the wrong crops because we had been too lenient with our water allocations to them. With a change in crops, we could save a lot of water.”54 The

As tempting as it is to think that desalination by itself solved all of Israel’s water problems, that isn’t entirely the case. It is the combination of many different approaches and techniques that gives Israel its water security.

Today, we are in a period like the dawn of agriculture. Prehistoric man had to go where the food was. Now, agriculture is an industry. Until recently, we had to go where the water was. But, no longer.”

With enough time and enough clean flowing water, nearly every polluted river will enjoy a revival. But with economic activity surrounding every waterway, no river in Israel can or will be returned to its natural state. It will take human intervention to improve what human activity and abuse earlier made worse; but it will always be a balance between economic interests and environmental restoration.

With more manufactured water available from desalination, it was possible to have the luxury of taking less water out of the rivers. With more water flowing, the natural cleansing that healthy rivers enjoy was enhanced.

“With our access to desalinated water, our efficiency in agriculture, and our reclaimed water,” Aviram says, “we can afford to divert water for ecological purposes. The more water that flows in the Jordan River, the healthier it will be. We are now a water-rich country and we can act like it with the Jordan as we do elsewhere.”

For those nations that do not soon develop answers for water scarcity, a likely further consequence will be environmental degradation. Aquifers will be overdrawn, rivers will grow ever more polluted, and fish and wildlife will die, among other unhappy outcomes. By having a surplus of water, rivers can flow and the standard of living can rise along with the quality of life.

Since the late 1950s, Israel has been seeding clouds with silver iodide in the winter months to enhance the amount of rainfall.

There isn’t a scarcity of water. There is a scarcity of innovation.

But whether it is local or global water problems that are to be addressed, innovation will need to be a central part of the solution.

Until the last few years, the old paradigm in water had been that if you needed more of it, just add more capacity. Drill more, pump more, and add more pipes. The new paradigm is to increase the efficiency of water use—to make every drop count and to reuse each drop as many times as possible.21

But the doctrine of nationalism would be replaced, over time, by regionalism with all of the benefits for our economies and for peaceful coexistence.”

“Once you begin providing water,” Ya’ari says, “the children become clean because they aren’t filling jerry cans with muddy water and because they can wash. They also stay healthy, because a large number of the children had been getting sick from drinking unclean water.” Another change is how they spend their days. “The children, especially the girls, had been walking two to three hours a day fetching water,” she says. “They would come back exhausted and filthy. Now, with water being pumped, they can go to school. They have no obligation to be fetching water at all. For them, water is for drinking and bathing.”54

Although Western countries all enjoy sophisticated water infrastructure and safe, running water available on demand, most of these countries have taken their water abundance for granted. Many have sleepwalked into counterproductive legal and regulatory structures, while their citizens, agricultural sectors, and industries have carelessly adopted wasteful—even destructive—consumption patterns.