AFTER A ONE-WEEK TRIP to Israel that ended last Friday, I have a new appreciation for the value of water.
I am also even more convinced now that much of the suffering Barbadians have endured as a result of water outages of late was caused by our own inefficiencies and not some act of God as those who lead would want us to believe.
Without doubt, the Barbadian and Israeli experiences are as different as chalk and cheese, and in many ways it would be unfair to make some comparisons, but we have solved problems larger than an almost imperceptible drought in the past, and had we applied the level of thinking that has been synonymous with Barbados’ past, the people of St Joseph and surrounding parishes would not have suffered the way they did for a whole year, and the residents of St Peter would not be still suffering today.
We may be considered a water-scarce country by international standards, but Israel gets around five inches of rain per year, and all of it falls in the space of a few weeks at the end of the year. In Barbados a heavy downpour can rain down much more than that on us in a few hours.
Israel benefits from billions of dollars in funding from the United States and Jews around the world have shown themselves to be quite resourceful business people and so are able to support their home state, so the country has access to much more financial resources than we will ever be able to conjure up for budgeting purposes. But they have other problems – particularly with their neighbours – that cause them to eat up a mammoth amount of financial resources in other pursuits.
Self sufficient
Yet, in less than 20 years they have moved from a water starved country in one of the driest places on earth, dependent largely on decreasing fresh water flows into the Sea of Galilee to water self-sufficiency based on a massive programme of desalination, treatment of waste water for non-potable purposes, strict conservation and the acceptance of a clear link between water availability and national security and development.
Israel requires more than two billion cubic metres of fresh water per year, and obtains more than 1.2 billion cubic metres of it from its five desalination plants drawing water from the Mediterranean Sea, supporting a population of 8.5 million concentrated largely in a narrow area of the 8 000 square mile nation.
Israel is divided into water zones to manage any water crisis.
I had a chance to visit the Ashkelon desalination facility, which is comprised essentially of two identical desal plants and a natural gas powered electricity generation station that keeps them going 24/seven.
One publication notes: “The Ashkelon facility, regarded as the most advanced desalination facility of its kind in the world, has been operational since 2005 and supplies more than 108 million cubic metres of water – approximately 15 per cent of domestic water consumption. The facility, which operates by means of reverse osmosis, includes several technological innovations and it supplies water of the highest quality.
“In December 2006, the Ashkelon plant won a special prize for ‘exceptional achievements’ in recognition of its huge technological contribution to the technological and economic promotion of the international desalination industry during the annual convention of the Israeli Desalination Association. This prize joins the Desalination Plant of the Year prize the facility won during the prestigious ceremony of Global Water.”
Personal one-gallon water bottles for every member of population.
Israel’s water authority, the government agency that purchases water from the private sector which operates the plants, readily admits that desalination is more costly than treating and pumping fresh water, but that fact has only led to innovation and efficiency that have considerably reduced the gap between the two.
For instance, the Ashkelon plant, which produces more water per year than Barbados consumes, was built in just three years at a cost of US $3.5 billion, but amazingly, it is so efficient and automated that it is operated by just 53 employees, including management, working around the clock.
What’s the Barbadian comparison?
There is also the issue of the willingness of consumers to pay for water at a rate that reflects the true cost. In Israel, the law requires producers to charge consumers the true cost of production.
Would we accept such in Barbados?
Constant fear
And because Israel lives in constant fear of attacks from some of its neighbours, it has developed an intricate system of protections in a regime that says anytime an area is short of water for more than eight hours a “water crisis” is declared.
St Joseph went without water for months and some officials still get offended if it is referred to as a crisis.
It is the system for responding to a water crisis that most intrigued me though. The whole country has been divided into neat zones with precise methods for ensuring that every single Israeli has an adequate supply in the event of a crisis.
The government has purchased collapsible personal water bottles for every citizen and organised a network of portable community water stations that eliminate all the concerns that Barbadians harbour about the water tanks set up in communities earlier this year. The illustrations say it all.
Early in 2016 Minister of Water Resource Management, Dr David Estwick, at the height of the water crisis here, told the house he had just returned from Israel looking at packaged desalination plants to boost the local supply. I’m sure if he had looked at that country’s response to a water crisis, the suffering of Barbadians would have been considerably reduced.
Of course, nothing I have said so far deals with the issue of water that we lose each day as a result of leakage. Depending on who is speaking, Barbados requires between 30 million and 40 million gallons of water a day, and between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of all that is pumped through the system is lost before it reaches the consumer.
The Israelis, on the other hand boast that they can account for every drop of water that leaves a pumping station. Being the skeptic that I am, I reminded the Israeli spokesman that his is a very young country – too young to have an ageing infrastructure and the problems associated with it. His counter was simple: age has nothing to do with it. It’s about planning and effective maintenance.
In Barbados we do a mighty lot of planning too….