Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Need. More. Water.


Thankfully, Israel received a serious dose of rain relief over the past few days, and the Kinneret rose 41 centimeters from last Friday through Tuesday. Every centimeter of height in the Kinneret is roughly equivalent to 1.7 million cubic meters of water...and the Kinneret is still 4.93 meters from maximum capacity -- meaning we're missing over 820 million cubic meters of water.

Even half of that would be amount to amazing rainfall, but we would need an additional 7 rainstorms like the one we just had which is incredibly unlikely.

While Israel is one of the world leaders in high-tech (and lowest cost) water desalination, extreme negligence on behalf of the past Kadima government resulted in Israel being completely unprepared for the impending water crisis. The writing has been on the wall for the past 3 years which is ample time to build desalination plants, yet the funding never came through.

Well, I won't kvetch about the water shortage -- so instead go ahead and enjoy these pictures from a trip to the Galil and Golan Heights yesterday.







Daily Hebrew Update on the Kinneret's water level.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do some math:

[Amount of water to Jordan] X [Years since 'peace' agreement] + [Amount of water to 'PA'] X [Years since 'Oslo'] = shortfall of water in Kinneret?

Leora said...

Great pics. You could submit this post to Watery Wednesday, a photo meme. However, that won't help with rainfall or the political situation.

Findalis said...

Love the pictures. And may water flow from the heavens to drench the parched land with abundance.

Anonymous said...

desalination plants are a fraud, and they destroy the beachs

Sarah Likes Green said...

lovely pictures.

and let's hope rain falls where it's needed... in israel and also here would be good!

Anonymous said...

gorgeous!

lawhawk said...

Great photos. The problem of water has been one that has been under the surface for years and the current drought is once again bringing attention to the issue.

It could be the one reason that Syria has to come to the table with Israel - their water situation is even more dire than Israel and the Golan water sources are desperately needed for Syria.

Neshama said...

Pictures are truly beautiful.
All that snow will melt and perhaps some of it run down the mountain into springs, etc. into farmland.

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