Sea of Galilee drying up

TEL AVIV

A dwindling water supply in the Sea of Galilee is pushing Israel to increase its use of desalination plants, with plans to expand two facilities and build two more by 2010. The biblical body of water is 16.2 feet below its lower “red line,” which marks the point at which it is ecologically inadvisable to draw water, according to the Israeli Water Authority.

Yet Israel continues to draw water from Galilee, to drink and to irrigate crops, said Uri Shor, a Water Authority official.

“We have no choice,” he said.

The parched region rarely gets any precipitation from late spring to early autumn.

Even if the fall and winter downpours in coming years are heavy and frequent, researchers say, fallen water levels in the Sea of Galilee are likely to remain.

“This is the most serious crisis we have experienced since the state was founded 60 years ago,” said Avner Adin of Hebrew University’s agriculture faculty.

An internationally recognized specialist in water as a natural resource and in the technological methods of increasing the life-sustaining fluid’s availability, Mr. Adin also has conferred with Jordanians and Palestinians on ways to solve the shortage.

Those experiencing the most serious consequences are the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Israel controls much of the water supply.

“People get running water once every two weeks,” said Jamil Hamad, a veteran journalist, foreign correspondent and former editor of an Arabic-language newspaper.

He attributed the situation to “an infrastructure that is behind the times.”

The pumps and pipes used to extract water from Galilee, the region’s primary source of drinking water, were installed by the Jordanians during the 19 years when they ruled the area and by the British authorities who preceded them.

There was relatively little modernization since the Israeli conquest in June 1967, despite the steep increase in the number of inhabitants and water usage since then.

Israel agreed to help supply water to the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords of 1993.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has allocated $50 million over a five-year period for water and sanitation projects that would benefit “needy communities.”

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