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Chapter Six: The Agricultural Roots of Israel's Water Crisis
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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129 THE WATER CRISIS IS NOT ONLY AN ACT OF gOD Between 2006 and 2009 israel faced one of the most severe droughts in the preceding eighty years. rainfall was 15–20 percent less than the average , resulting in severe cutbacks in water allocations to agriculture, which for some farmers resulted in cuts of up to 40–50 percent or more to their annual allocations. There was a national wave of concern and anxiety about the implications of the water crisis, which was exacerbated by the media and to a great extent by the farmers and the agricultural lobby. aside from the lower amounts of precipitation, however, the water crisis is arguably no less the result of a chronic problem of mismanagement and overutilization of israel’s limited natural water resources. This mismanagement resulted mainly from perpetual demands from the agricultural sector for increasing the already heavy allocations of subsidized water, even after the country’s natural water resources were fully developed and exploited to their limit in the 1980s. to meet these growing demands, israel ’s agricultural and water authorities, dominated by the agricultural sector, embarked on a conscious program of overpumping of groundwater and surface water resources beyond the limits of the mean annual safe yield, resulting in serious degradation of the country’s natural water resources: intrusion of seawater many kilometers from the coastline, the irreversible salination of nuCHAPTER SIx THE AgRICULTURAL ROOTS OF ISRAEL’S WATER CRISIS Hillel Shuval 130 HILLEL SHUVAL merous coastal sweetwater wells, and the lowering of groundwater and Lake Kinneret levels below the red line of pollution danger (Plaut 2000; siton 2003; state Controller 1991; GiCmiWr 2010). all of these factors are the central and real precursors of israel’s water crisis. While many of israel’s top water scientists and engineers were fully aware of the potential dangers involved in its water policy, few were prepared to oppose it actively within the official circles of the water establishment and even less so publicly. This lack of opposition was mainly due to the atmosphere of almost total and unconditional support for prioritizing the needs and interests of agriculture that prevailed within israel society in general and within the water establishment in particular. Why has israel, a modern nation with a well-organized and apparently rational water administration, some of the world’s top water engineers and scientists, and a modern high-tech economy, developed such an illogical and environmentally destructive water resources policy? We will examine the relationship between on the one hand israel’s water management perceptions, concepts, ideology, and problems and its deep historic and cultural commitments to agriculture and on the other hand a romantic vision of a pastoral israel , which is part of israel’s collective memory that to this day still influences water policy in conscious and subconscious ways. israel has two main natural water sources of good-quality drinking water, surface water and groundwater, and two main supplemental, nonconventional water sources—recycled wastewater and desalinated brackish and seawater. There are varying estimates of the natural water resources of israel ranging from an annual total of 1,400 million cubic meters a year to 1,800 million cubic meters a year depending on the source. estimates are based on a number of sources, including the israel Water authority (2008); and presented here are my estimate of the range of annual mean safe yields of israel’s natural water sources (expressed in millions of cubic meters per year) prior to the severe 2006–2009 drought (israel Water authority 2008; imfa-israel ministry of foreign affairs 2002; siton 2003; Kislev 2001; GiCmiWr 2010) and the lower estimates, based on a personal communication from Professor Uri shamirtechnion 2010: Jordan river/Lake Kinneret system 500–700 floodwaters 200 Groundwater 700–900 Coastal aquifer 320 mountain aquifer-yarkon-tananim 370 total estimate of natural water sources: 1,400–1,800 [3.88.60.5] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:42 GMT) THE AgRICULTURAL ROOTS Of ISRAEL’S wATER CRISIS 131 The seasonal and geographic distribution of the rainfall in israel presented a serious problem for the agricultural development of the country. The rainfall in israel is seasonal, with 90 percent falling during the period of september to april, the nonirrigation season. The summer agricultural season is basically dry. The geographic distribution is such that the rainfall is heaviest in the north—the Galilee and Golan with about 800–1000 millimeters per year, tapering off to the south with a mean of...