The Australian Friends of the KKL (a Zionist organization) donated a green water project to the city of Kever Benjamin. The idea (from Australian Monash University) is to collect rainwater and purify it by biological filters (vegetation, bacterial layers, etc.) and store it in the aquifer. Then during the summer dry months, the water will be pumped back for irrigation.
The problem I see with the idea is that (1) it does not add to the current water availability in the country - the rainfall mostly infiltrates to the aquifer anyway and is pumped as drinking water, (2) the cost of the irrigation water so produced is exhorbitant, even discounting the cost of the infrastructure, which was a present. The cost of maintenance and pumping is much higher than the cost of desalinated water produced in Israel at 0.5 dollars per 1000 liter. The project is green, it is sited in a park, but completely useless and I can assure that it will not be maintained and it will be abandoned. Kever Benjamin municipality is unable to maintain and make work even the fountains in its central park, which are dry for years.
2 comments:
By quickly concentrating the collected water in a pond you reduce the surface area and thus evaporation, no?
Do you have hard #'s showing that this is more costly than desalinization? I realize there are scale factors but desalinization is capital and energy intensive. This biofilter, once built, I suppose is supposed to be largely self sustaining. That being said, it's hard to believe that it would have any significant impact - I have friends with swimming pools that appear larger. Then again America is on a completely different scale - you could drop all of Israel neatly into the center of Lake Michigan and not make a splash on shore.
K
A few years ago I had to open a side door of my store late at night and I didn't have a the key. Needing the key I paged Jack since he had it and could open the door to let the truckdriver in.
The problem was that the door was located in a dark hallway and Jack was drunk. Since I needed the door opened and Jack had the keys we both hovered near the door, blocking what little light was available from reaching the lock or Jack's hands, this making the task even harder.
Frustrated at all of the time that had been wasted while Jack fumbled with the keys I finally exclaimed "just give it to me and I'll stick it in!"
Jack went silent from all of his talking when I said that and he kept his head down, still fumbling with the keys. After a very brief silence Jack kept fumbling with the keys, but he said "You sound like you've been married."
I don't know if Jack's wife ever barked that at him in frustration on a late night, and I'm not sure I want to know.
You probably don't want to know either now, and this story isn't all that funny. But I have succeeded in wasting precious seconds of your life.
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