Galilee residents make a stink about sewage problems
Haaretz
July 23, 2007
By Zafrir Rinat
Residents in Arab and Jewish communities near the Hilazon Stream in the Galilee are fed up with its sewage problem. Last week, they decided to share their troubles with National Infrastructures Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, sending him a petition describing how fecal sewage flows undisturbed into the stream, endangering their children's health. They demanded that Ben-Eliezer order the national sewage authority to immediately address the problem.
Galilee streams have become sewage carriers in recent years, and the region of lovely landscape that is supposed to attract tourists is rapidly filling up with sites hazardous to everyone's health. The catalyst is population growth and the inability of local authorities to maintain and operate waste treatment systems. The most serious case is the pollution of Kziv Stream by sewage originating primarily in Beit Jann, which led to the contamination of springs used for drinking water.
Residents of communities in the Misgav Regional Council and Arab locales, such as Sakhnin, Dir Hana and Arabeh, recently formed the Committee to Save the Hilazon Stream. In a petition addressed to Ben-Eliezer, they said that the river is being inundated with sewage from places where 20,000 people live.
"After years of neglect and following repeated applications to the national sewage authority and all channels in your ministry, we were informed two years ago that a solution exists and it is laying a kilometer-long sewage pipeline to be connected to an orderly sewage grid," the residents wrote. "Unfortunately, for two years, the authorities handling this under your responsibility have not met their obligations and are stalling on dealing with this even today."
Sewage is also flowing into the streams from the direction of the town of Tamra and the community of Zarzir, endangering drilling for drinking water, according to Sigal Blumenfeld of the northern district at the Environment Ministry. In the case of Tamra, there is a plan to connect the town to the new waste treatment facility to be opened near Acre. At Beit Jann, by contrast, the dysfunctional sewage system is supposed to be connected to a new facility that does not fall under the jurisdiction of the local council, but that facility is only in the planning stage.
Blumenfeld says there is a vicious cycle at work in the Galilee: local authorities cannot maintain sewage systems because they are in crisis financially, and the recurrent malfunctions only tighten their budget crunch.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/884491.html