Dr Peretz Dar published a large article in Ynet about the dangers of the current plan that calls for supplying Israel's population with desalinated sea water instead of "natural" water. He starts storying the Otzar (the Treasury)'s sabotaging water saving campaigns and its (successful) policy of privatization. In the near future all of Israel's drinking water will come from six private desalination plants and "natural" water will be used in agriculture.
His argument is that reducing water consumption would have made desalination (and the need to erect a new large power plant) unnecessary, that desalinated water is bad for human health because it does not contain calcium, magnesium and boron, and that exposes Israel to war risks.
I met Peretz Dar when we worked in TAHAL. He is a bona fide water professional (aka he knows the subject) but I think his arguments are all wrong. Saving water has its limits and at certain point, it becomes inconvenient and an obstacle for economic activity. The water saving strategy (as producing illimited quantities of drinking water at a low price) is "green", although he is too old to use the current environmental, New Age, "Save the Earth" images.
The lack of minerals in "artificial" water is untrue because they are added to it and "natural" calcium from the hills of the Shomron is the same as the calcium carbonate added to the water by grounded Shomron stone. Regarding privatization, the former situation of Mekorot Water Corporation monopoly, it worked (and I worked) because Israel was a young socialist country, with a homogeneous population, but times have changed and Mekorot cannot be remade as the wonderful group of idealists "with a national mission" that it was.
Regarding war risks, the destruction of all desalination plants would only throw us back to natural water, which is being channelled to the agriculture. In case of destruction, it is the agriculture that would suffer. Israel is growing and cannot stay the pastoral countryside envisioned by Ben Gurion. We are forced to become a high-tech society, with all its risks.
5 comments:
Where I live we are served by a private water company and it works just fine, though the cost may be marginally higher than (a well run) publicly owned utility due to the need to return profit to the investors. Our power, gas and telephone utilities are also privately run and have been for over a century, with great reliability. There are no national security implications. Water treatment plants could be military targets to the same extent as desalinization plants.
The argument that desalinated water is less healthy to drink is a red herring. Out of the hundreds of liters per day each family uses, only a few liters are actually drunk. If it really concerns you that the tap water is less healthful, you can buy natural spring water for drinking purposes - it tastes better anyway.
Usually RO water is remineralized with calcium already but if it was truly a public health issue, a blend of minerals closely resembling the profile of a natural spring water could be introduced at very little cost. But I doubt that it is such an issue. In the US, tap water supplies (which are almost always from natural sources) range from very "hard" (lots of dissolved minerals, which lead to their own problems) to very soft and there are no know public health differences.
K
Yet respectable water experts write these kind of articles in Israel and many people believes them and fights the "natural" water fight -- they try to catch the rainwater (the pollutedest of all) and urban surface runoff. They positively hate progress.
Yet respectable water experts write these kind of articles in Israel and many people believes them and fights the "natural" water fight -- they try to catch the rainwater (the pollutedest of all) and urban surface runoff. They positively hate progress.
Modern man is obsessed with "natural" products. In the "natural" state the average human lifespan was maybe 35 years. Cholera is also "natural".
K
They want artificial "natural" not real natural. Have you eaten wild apples? Small, acid, green, full of worms and other parasites. Unimproved "natural" trees.
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