Study: Israel is biggest polluter in eastern Mediterranean

Reuters, 17.10.07. Israel is the biggest polluter in the eastern Mediterranean, dumping over 140 tons of heavy metals into the sea every year with government approval, an environmental group claimed in a recently published report. In Israel, long preoccupied with security issues, environmental awareness has been slow to take hold. According to the Zalul organization, more than 100 permits for discharging wastewater into the sea are granted by a government committee every year -sometimes very close to bathing beaches. "The state of Israel's coastal waters is appalling," the environmental group Zalul said in its State of the Sea Report for 2007. Of the heavy metals and pesticides discharged into the sea under government licenses, are 130 tons of pesticides, 5 tons of arsenic, 1,300 tons of ammonia and a ton of cyanide, the Zalul report said. The most recent United Nations report on the Mediterranean ranked the greater Tel Aviv area as one of the 10 most polluting urban centers in the Mediterranean. A government proposal to help clean up the polluted Kishon River in northern Israel could increase the problems in the Mediterranean. The plan calls for a pipeline to take waste from the factories along the river, including Israel's biggest oil refinery, and spill it directly into the sea.

Map of Pollution Points in Israel