Posted on 01/04/22
| News Source: Jewish Press
The Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee convened on Monday and discussed the pollution in Nahal Alexander, which is contaminated by untreated sewage running from the Palestinian Authority, “ecological terrorist attack” as one official termed it.
Nahal Alexander is a river in Israel that flows from the western side of Samaria to the Mediterranean Sea, north of Netanya. The length of the river is about 45 km.
Dr. Galit Shaul, head of the Emek Hefer Regional Council through which Nahal Alexander flows, told the Committee that “my residents are not the ones polluting Nahal Alexander, but rather raw sewage and treated wastewater coming from the Palestinian Authority. Despite prizes given in the past for cooperation by the PA with our Drainage Authority, and despite the fact that a wastewater treatment plant was built with international funding, we see animal carcasses, blood, and feathers flowing in Emek Hefer and reaching the sea.”
In 2003, Nahal Alexander was part of a cleanup project that won first prize in the Riverprize environmental rehabilitation competition in Australia after being one of the most polluted rivers in Israel.
“Beaches that have two million visitors every year are closed over and over. It’s a health risk to the residents, people visiting the stream and bathers,” she warned,
Shaul pointed out that “the issue is resolvable. In 2014 the council filed a petition to the High Court of Justice against the state, and withdrew it because the state made a promise. Now there’s a plan for a wastewater treatment plant, but there’s no budget. The Water Authority is advancing the plan, after a long period that we were working on a different plan, too expensive, that was supposed to cost NIS 400 million.”