In this Wednesday, July 17, 2018, photo, Israeli farmer Ofer Moskovitz checks soil in his field near Kfar Yuval, Israel. A five-year drought is challenging Israel’s strategy of addressing its water woes with desalination. With farmers reeling from parched fields and the country’s most important bodies of water shrinking, Israel once again is having to cope with a stifling lack of water despite professing to have tackled the issue. (Caron Creighton/Associated Press)
KFAR YUVAL, ISRAEL, AUG 8, 2018 -- For years, public service announcements warned Israelis to save water: Take shorter showers. Plant resilient gardens. Conserve. Then Israel invested heavily in desalination technology and professed to have solved the problem by tapping into the abundant waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The once ubiquitous conservation warnings vanished.
Now, a five-year drought is challenging that strategy, as farmers struggle and the country’s most important bodies of water shrink.
It’s a confounding situation for a country that places itself on the forefront of desalination technology in an arid region, where water is a key geostrategic issue that has its own clauses in peace agreements.
“Nobody expected five years of drought in a row, so despite our desalination capacity, it’s still a very, very grave situation,” said Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of energy. Read more at Washington Post
Read more at WaterWorld.com
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