Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan recently announced that the first stage of the project, to begin this summer, involves cleaning up the river belt. That will include excavating and cleaning the polluted Kishon River, at an estimated cost of approximately NIS 200 million ($56.5 million).

The Kishon, one of Israel’s largest and most important rivers, flows about 43.5 miles from the northern West Bank through the Jezreel Valley, passing through the Carmel hills on its way to meet the sea at Haifa Bay.

More acidic than Coca Cola

The Kishon River’s woes date back to the late 1930s, when the ruling British authorities built petrochemical refineries there to support war efforts, says Dr. Yishayahu Bar-Or, the Environmental Protection Ministry’s deputy director general for natural resources and head of the steering committee for the project.

These refineries haphazardly dumped all their toxic waste into the Kishon, Bar-Or says. To make matters worse, municipalities in the Haifa area then started discharging untreated or partially treated sewage into the river as well. And that’s not all.

“In the 1970s, chemical fertilizer industries started contributing their share to the lethal cocktail,” says Bar-Or. “The river became absolutely dead -- even bacteria were not able to live there, because it was more acidic than Coca Cola.”

This was a sad state of affairs for a river with a proud history. The Kishon figures prominently in biblical accounts of the prophets Deborah (Judges 5:21) and Elijah (1 Kings 18:40). Already at that time thousands of years ago, it was referred to as “that ancient river.”

The situation steadily worsened until finally, in 1997, the Environmental Protection Ministry (http://www.sviva.gov.il/bin/en.jsp?enPage=e_homePage) issued strict dumping guidelines to all industrial polluters. They used investments adding up to $120 million from these industries to build proper treatment plants for their effluence. Another 40 million shekels (about $11 million at the time) went toward wastewater treatment facilities for urban sewage coming from the greater Haifa area.

These efforts were prodded along by watchdog groups including the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (ww.adamteva.org.il); and the Zalul Environmental Association (http://www.zalul.org.il/en/default.asp), which conducted an investigative report on the river that led to the Israel Ports clearing 75 tons of sludge from the banks of the Kishon in 2005.

“Since 2001, the quality of the water has improved significantly,” says Bar-Or, “enough so that fish, fowl and turtles have returned along with rich flora. Even species considered extinct are reestablishing there. The Kishon has a much more attractive look today.”

However, he stresses, what remains throughout the entire lake is “a thick layer of sediment accumulated over the past 30 or 40 years, and it is polluted with hydrocarbon residues from oil refining procedures, plus heavy metals from fertilizer industries.”

Erdan released a statement in February saying that the Environmental Protection Ministry “ascribes a very high value to the Kishon and its environs. Today, 10 years after the government decided to clean the Kishon of the poisons that were preventing the public from returning to, and enjoying, it, we are starting to clean the river and the project will be completed within the next two years. Many challenges yet await us, but we will deal with them all.”

Choosing the best approach to a mucky problem

Over the past five years, the ministry has commissioned studies to determine the exact makeup of the sediment and has explored several options to neutralize it. “After long consideration and tours of several European countries to see what they are doing in similar situations, we decided that the optimal approach is a biological treatment for hydrocarbons and then a secondary treatment for the heavy metals, to be determined later,” says Bar-Or.

The steering committee, which includes academics, industry experts and officials of environmental non-governmental organizations, decided that rather than send the sediments to a landfill, it will dredge the muck and pile it at a 74-acre site nearby. Bar-Or says the pile is expected to weigh half a million of tons and reach a height of 29.5 feet, or nine meters.

Once the material reaches a certain moisture and is allowed to aerate, natural bacteria should begin the job of degrading the oil residues – possibly with a little help from compost-like substances to accelerate the process. Once that is accomplished, the heavy metals will be easier to deal with, according to Bar-Or.

Still, it won’t happen overnight. “The actual process of degradation should take place in three months or so, based on what we saw in Europe,” says Bar-Or. The team visited river restoration sites in France, England, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as the United States. “However, you cannot treat the whole pile at the same time, so it will take two to three years altogether.”

During this process, a landscape architect will be in charge of making sure the site looks aesthetically pleasing. Afterward, it will be turned into public park – “needless to say, safe for the public,” stresses Bar-Or.

Israel will share experience

In typical Israeli style, knowledge is a two-way street. After the steering committee was confident of its final plan, developed after intensive consultation with experts from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (http://www1.technion.ac.il/en) and the Ministry of Agriculture’s Volcani Institute (http://www.agri.gov.il/en/departments/84.aspx), they started sharing that expertise.

“We had visits here from two or three [foreign] companies that deal with sediment rehabilitation and treatment,” says Bar-Or. “One of my goals is to make this unique experience available to all experts interested. We will publish all our findings, and perhaps allow university students to follow the project as it progresses.”

The Kishon River Authority (http://www.kishon.org.il) gave a presentation on the restoration project recently to a Chinese delegation of 25 trainees and engineers, project managers and regional managers in the Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Water Resources from three provinces.

This learning expedition, made possible by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ international aid agency MASHAV (mashav.mfa.gov.il), will help these Chinese officials apply the techniques learned in cleaning up their own contaminated rivers. Israel signed a related agreement for cooperation in capacity-building, exchange of knowledge and technology with China.

Coming: Water sports, recreation

The Israeli government’s grand plan is to reserve the small lakes in the Kishon River Park area for water sports. Sports facilities and commercial enterprises are expected to be developed along the Kishon, and existing walking, running and biking paths along the river belt will be enhanced. There is even talk of building a public amphitheater, as well as tourist-oriented scenic agriculture including a nursery, fruit orchards and a produce market.

“We will make the Kishon suitable for rowing, although maybe not for fishing,” says Bar-Or. He stresses that although some upstream areas look neglected, the improvements already accomplished have made the Kishon river bank a popular weekend gathering area. Brides and grooms flock there for pre-wedding photographs against the backdrop of fish jumping in and out of the water.

The coming improvements are aimed also at improving the general quality of life of Greater Haifa and its northern suburbs, Bar-Or says. “This will change the face of the area and will correct a continuing environmental outrage.”

‘We will bring back the public’

Netanyahu echoed that sentiment in his statement. “The ability to leave the city for open spaces is what maintains quality of life. City residents, families, young people and children must have their ‘green lungs.’ We will invest hundreds of millions in cleaning the muck from the Kishon River and in rehabilitating it,” said the prime minister.

He announced that in addition to this project, the government plans to establish Ariel Sharon Park in central Israel and another park in the heart of Beersheva. “These parks are designed for their respective metropolitan areas in order to provide quality of life for families,” he announced.

The Environmental Ministry is working in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (http://www.moag.gov.il/agri/English), the Kishon Drainage Authority, the Kishon River Authority and petrochemical and fertilizer manufacturers along the Kishon River bank. Mayors of the towns bordering the river have committed to financing 10 percent (about NIS 20 million) of the cost of the clean up.

“We will rehabilitate the river; we will bring back the public,” the prime minister said. “The gigantic [Kishon] park will be a green area, replete with life and flowing water.”

 

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Watch a video (in Hebrew) about the river