World
ON THE COVER
Shell Game from page A21
The first to come online, built and oper-
ated in Ashkelon by IDE Technologies, is
the largest plant of its kind in the world.
It produces 26 billion gallons of drink-
ing water a year at a cost of $1.97 per
1,000 gallons and was recognized as the
Desalination Plant of the Year at the Global
Water Awards in Dubai in March 2006.
And the great advances in low-cost
desalination are in the future through
Israeli research into solar energy and nan-
otechnology, said Oded Distel, the director
of Israel's NEWTech (Novel Efficient Water
Technologies) initiative.
NEWTech is a pilot project of the Israeli
Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor to
promote Israeli businesses worldwide. The
initiative started in 2006, when Israel's
water-related exports totaled $800 million.
The goals of the three-year initiative are
to boost the exports to $2 billion by 2010,
establish a solid global foundation for the
Israeli industry and help develop a range
of companies in Israel to build on that
base.
choose, we can produce drinking water:'
Parsons said. But a psychological obstacle
remains before people will drink water
that once was in their toilets, so the
cleaned water is put to agricultural and
industrial uses even though the process
could produce potable water for half the
cost of desalination. Of course, Israel is
working on cheaper desalination as well.
"At this point, Israel is a world-class
leader in water technology, on a par with
any other country," Rubel said.
Israeli companies old and new have won
contracts in more than 100 countries for
a range of products and systems, Distel
said. NiroSoft, for example, delivered 10
portable desalination units to relief agen-
cies for survivors of the Indian Ocean
tsunamis in December 2004. Amiad
Filtration is providing the sewage treat-
ment for the Beijing Olympic village this
summer. NaanDin, an irrigation company
formed in 2001 from a merger of a couple
of Israeli companies, sold half of itself to
Indian conglomerate Jain last year.
Israeli exports in the industry rose 28
World - Class Leader
percent to $1.1 billion in 2007, Distel said.
"We look at water technology as the next
Ten Israeli venture-capital funds have
engine for the Israeli economy," Distel said. committed $250
Desalination, filtration, irrigation, ultra-
million to water
violet purification, wastewater treatment
technologies and
with numerous approaches, pollution
Israel has 70 start-
prevention, leakage control and other
up companies in
infrastructure management are some of
the water business.
the areas in which Israeli companies are
International giants
pursuing global business.
such as Siemens,
For example, Israel developed drip
General Electric and
irrigation, a technique discovered in 4th
Dow Chemical have
century archaeological ruins, because it
entered strategic
couldn't afford the water loss to evapora-
partnerships with Israeli companies. (For
tion involved in traditional irrigation. So
a list of major Israeli water-tech compa-
it delivered precise amounts of water to its nies and what they do, visit JNonline.us .)
crops in drops.
To showcase Israeli technology, Mekorot
The refinements of the process include
established WaTech — Entrepreneurship
delivering water directly to roots through
& Partnership Center for Water
high-grade plastic tubing, said Gene
Technologies — in 2005 while Oren led
Rubel, an Atlanta business consultant who
the company. The program allows Israeli
heads the clean-tech committee of the
companies to test their ideas at Mekorot
American-Israel Chamber of Commerce
facilities and takes advantage, Oren said,
in the Southeast. One company makes leaf of the fact that Israel has examples of 40
sensors to gauge when each plant needs
percent of the climate zones in the world
watering.
despite its small size.
More than half the water used in Israeli
"We understood that we needed to
agriculture is recycled — a higher per-
change the paradigm from collecting
centage than any other country, according
water to producing and using it more
to JNF. That makes sense, given that Israel
efficiently;' he said. The great success of
recycles 75 percent of its wastewater, Distel Israel's efforts, Oren said, is that the issue
said. Spain, at 12 percent, is No. 2 in the
of water is no longer a question of suffi-
world at water recycling.
cient supply, but merely a matter of cost.
Many Israeli companies offer new tech-
"We do not have a choice he said. "We
nologies for cleaning wastewater — as
will produce new solutions because at
well as industrial waste and contaminated
the end of the day we are a small country.
ground water — to make the water safe
We need to offer new things in order to
for reuse and to remove the threat of any
survive."
toxins or other contaminants.
Oren chaired an international water
"The technology is there that, if we so
trade show called WaTec that Israel held
at the end of October. It drew more than
2,000 visitors, including 25 cabinet-level
ministers of foreign governments, 90 for-
eign delegations, top executives from such
companies as GE and Siemens, and the
water chiefs for every state in Australia.
Israel plans another WaTec conference
in 2009, Oren said.
"The fact that so many people came
shows how important is this Israeli indus-
try:' Distel said.
Need Over Politics
Distel's purpose is not to win good public-
ity for Israel, but he said it's a nice bonus if
more people around the world develop an
image of Israel as a supplier of humanitar-
ian technology.
"By leading the world in water solutions,
maybe we can offer different points of
view for the country:' Oren said.
Mansour, a former ambassador to
Ecuador, said he has seen that effect in
Latin America. "If you mention Israel in
terms of water in Latin America, every-
body knows you're talking about a super-
power."
That's not to say Israel's efforts have
been free of prob-
lems. JNF was
denied consultative
status before the
U.N. Economic and
Social Council last
year in a purely
anti-Israel move,
but Hess said JNF
continues to offer
its expertise.
Diplomacy is "a very cynical game
Mansour said. "Sometimes some countries
that you help don't want you to go out and
speak about it."
But Hess said the need for water opens
an avenue for international cooperation
— an avenue that could become a road to
peace.
Israel has used water to become a
peacemaker in Latin America, Mansour
said. Countries that fought wars over
borders now are working with Israeli com-
panies to develop shared water resources
along those borders.
"It's human need;' Hess said, and people
ultimately will put it above politics. He
noted a U.N. session JNF sponsored for
nongovernmental organizations a few
years ago on the water crisis. People pre-
dicted that organizations would stay away,
but that didn't happen.
Just as Israel has shared its agricultural
know-how with developing nations in
Africa and elsewhere since the 1950s, it
is willing to do water business anywhere
in the world, even in countries that don't
recognize Israel, Mansour said.
Israel is a superpower
in water technology
and has used water to
become a peacemaker.
A22
March 6 2008
Distel opened meetings with state
government and water agency officials in
Georgia in January, and Israelis will play
prominent roles this month in the annual
conference of the Georgia Association of
Water Professionals. Success in solving
Georgia's problems with water supply and
management would go a long way toward
bringing water peace to the U.S. Southeast.
The same could happen in the Middle
East.
"Water is a big challenge, and it can
really be the reason for the next genera-
tion of wars in the Middle East, but if we
want to be positive, we have to see also
that it can be a great reason for coopera-
tion:' Mansour said.
The prime example of that coop-
eration is Jordan. Under the 1994 peace
treaty, Israel supplies 13.2 billion gallons
of water a year to the desert kingdom,
and the countries are partners with the
Palestinians in a proposed U.N.-backed
project to save the evaporating Dead
Sea with a canal connecting it to the
Red Sea. Jordan not only has welcomed
Israeli expertise, including that of JNF,
but its Higher Council of Technology is
a partner with JNF, Egypt's Ministry of
Agriculture and Land Reclamation, and
six American universities in the 17-year-
old International Arid Land Consortium.
The IALC built a desalination water-
purification plant outside Petra, Jordan,
which Hess, an IALC vice president, vis-
ited. "It's amazing to see this complete
desert, desolation, but there is green and
agriculture for the grazing of their flocks.
It all has to do with Israeli initiative
In Egypt, Mansour said, Israel has used
its agricultural expertise, including water-
stretching irrigation, to establish two
farms that are the size of some American
counties. Those farms have allowed Egypt
to become an exporter of apples and mel-
ons, but Egypt is silent about the Israeli
role.
The Palestinians are not silent about
the role of water in final-status talks with
Israel. Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas lists water among six
issues that are essential to any agreement.
That prominence is fine with Oren. "I
prefer that Israel will lead the world in
supplying water technology and not in
supplying ammunition," he said. "The
market is bigger, and I think it's good for
all our supporters in the world to under-
stand that water can be a very important
means of peace in this region:'
❑
See jnonline.us for a list of Israel companies
involved in water technology.
Michael Jacobs is managing editor of our sister
paper, the Atlanta Jewish Times.