Israel’s National Water Company Mekorot Israel’s National Water Company

Mekorot Mekorot is Israel’s National Water Company. It was founded in 1937, 11 years prior to Israel’s founding. While the company is in charge of many elements of water control in Israel, including the Shafdan Waste Water Treatment Plant we visited, Mekorot’s largest project is the National Water Carrier. Originally titled the Jordan Project, the carrier was built in the 1950s and 60s. The carrier was designed to take water from Lake Kinneret and the Jordan River down into the arid Negev for agricultural use. Over time, the carrier has expanded into other parts of Israel and consists of 10,500 kilometers of pipeline and carries 70% of the country’s total water supply, including 80% of all drinking water in Israel. As we saw in Israel, the pipeline is painted different colors depending on what water it is carrying inside. For consistency, it should be noted that I pulled all of my numbers from the Mekorot website, which appears to have last been updated in 2011. http://2xkcvt35vyxycuy7x23e0em1a5g.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/mekorot.jpg

Reverse osmosis desalination A major source of the water the National Water Carrier carries comes from desalinated brackish water. While desalination was introduced into Israel before the 2000’s, the first major desalination plant was built in Israel in 2005 at Ashkelon in response to a major drought Israel was facing at the time. Since then, three more major desalination plants have been build in Palmachin, Hadera, and Soreq, and another one is expected to be completed in Ashdod by the end of the year. Most desalination plants in Israel use a reverse osmosis system for both seawater and brackish water desalination to draw the salt out of the water. The system makes use of spiraled filters made of membranes and pressure. As you can see in the picture here, pressure is used to push the water through cylindrical membranes. The salt in the water cannot move through the membranes and becomes stuck, drifting out of the system as a brine. Since the salt cannot make it through the filter, only the clean water comes out at the end of the process. After it is treated of other contaminants, the water is safe to drink. http://www.lenntech.com/desalination/general/revers2.jpg

Hadera The plant above is the desalination plant at Hadera, which is the sole seawater desalination plant in Israel. According to the Mekorot website, the company has contracts with 31 plants to receive their desalinated water. The major plants that I listed before are build on build-operate-transfer agreements, where Mekorot gives a private company the money to build the plant and then operates the plant for so many years as decided on in the contract. For example, Mekorot spent 200 million dollars on the new Ashdod plant and will operate it until 2027, when control is turned over to the private partner. Like the build-operate-transfer, Mekorot purchases the water from the plants who produce it, typically at a rate of so many shekels per cubic meter. The current going rate is about 2.5 shekels per cubic meter, or about 60 cents per cubic meter. From the 31 plants Mekorot obtains water from, it purchases a total of 1 million cubic meters of water a day. With the national water carrier’s annual output being around 1.5 billion cubic meters, desalinated water accounts for around 24% of the water put out by Mekorot each year. http://www.abtplanners.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ind.-Desalination-Project-Hadera.jpg

hadera Acquiring desalinated water has been a great gain for Mekorot. Not only can Israel make use of its brackish and sea water reserves, but it can cut back on the amount of water Mekorot draws from the nation’s natural fresh water sources. However, there are a few problems with desalination. One is the cost. While reverse osmosis desalination is cheaper than multi-stage flash desalination used by neighboring countries, including Saudi Arabia, purchasing the water costs Mekorot money, where as the company already has rights to draw from Lake Kinneret. Currently, desalination does not produce enough water for Mekorot to stop drawing from the Lake completely. However, Mekorot and other researchers in Israel are looking into this issue and are looking for methods to both reduce the cost of desalinated water and to improve the efficiency of desalination plants. Also, the benefits of desalination out way the financial costs. The plants require construction crews to build it and technicians to work in the plant, which stimulates the local economy. There are also health risks with the desalinated water that must be managed. Bacteria and other contaminates are not removed by the desalination process, so Mekorot must make sure the water is safe enough to drink. There is also the issue of the brine that is left over at the end of the desalination process. Mekorot has researched the most effective and safest way to dispose of the brine, and a desalination plant in Haifa began using brine in their desalination process in 2009. Despite these concerns, the integration of desalinated water into the Israeli water supply has been monumental for Mekorot and the National Water Carrier. http://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/desalination-hadera-israel.jpg