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Wastewater Treatment
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Effluent Disposal and Reuse
Updated: 28/01/2010
The combination of severe water shortage, contamination of water resources, densely populated urban areas and highly intensive irrigated agriculture, makes it essential that Israel put wastewater treatment and reuse high on its list of national priorities. Effluents are the most readily available and cheapest source of additional water and provide a partial solution to the water scarcity problem. In fact, Israel's Water Law includes sewage water in its definition of "water resources." Today, the rate of effluent reuse in Israel is among the highest in the world (70%), but it does not encompass the total quantity of wastewater produced in Israel nor does it comply with sufficiently high quality standards.
National policy calls for the gradual replacement of freshwater allocations to agriculture by reclaimed effluents. In the year 2000, treated wastewater constituted about 17% of consumption by the agricultural sector. By 2008, in the wake of several years of drought, effluents constituted about half of the water supplied to agriculture.
The Ministry of Health maintains a permit system designed to ensure that irrigation with effluents is limited to crops such as cotton, fodder, etc. Only highly treated effluents, after chlorination, are used for irrigation of citrus groves and other crops.
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