Trashing the Holy Land

Israelis still do not understand that their cavalier
disregard for the environment carries a high price
By LISA BEYER TEL AVIV

It rises precipitously from the otherwise level coastal plain, a stunning, freckled plateau swarming with birds. People come too, drawn by treasures hidden in its immensity. But it is no Eldorado. It is called Hiriya, and it is a giant pile of trash. The 60-hectare landmark southeast of Tel Aviv contains 6 million cu m of the accumulated dross of generations of city dwellers in Israel's midsection.

A symbol of national sloppiness run amok, the overflowing heap lately has proved prone to avalanches. Worse, pilots have warned that near-disasters have become commonplace at nearby Ben Gurion Airport as planes collide with the gulls, kites and storks that feed at the dump. At last, it was too much even for the environmentally careless Israeli government. After years of warnings by experts that Hiriya posed a "severe threat" to groundwater and soil, authorities earlier this month finally shut it down to incoming garbage. Ultimately, the heap will be covered with soil and turned into a park.

That the closure was provoked only by the threat of an imminent air catastrophe was typical of Israel's approach to the environment -- which is to ignore it. Because of decades of such neglect, the Holy Land is a rather filthy place. If Israel is the Biblical land of milk and honey, you'd better not drink or eat of it today. "It's a Zionist paradox," says Alon Tal, founding chairman of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense. "We came here to redeem a land and we end up contaminating it." In their enthusiasm to build, build, build, Israel's pioneers neglected environmental concerns. Israel's preoccupation with security meant secondary issues like the environment got a low priority. Says Yossi Sarid, the former Environment Minister, "Our history concerning the environment is not the most glorified."

Three weeks ago an inferno supplied a case in point. The fire, sparked by an overturned barrel of lithium, ravaged part of Ramat Hovav, the country's center for hazardous waste disposal in the Negev desert, terrifying nearby residents. It was the tenth serious accident at the facility, where past mismanagement, according to the Environment Ministry, has created "serious environmental risks." Says Sarid, "For 20 years, it was a wild area. Nobody documented the burials there." Until 1980, when Ramat Hovav opened, individual companies dumped their toxic trash wherever they could. Many still do. According to one study, only half of all hazardous waste produced in Israel makes it to the center.

The pollution of Israel's waterways was dramatically underscored a year ago when, during opening ceremonies for the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics, scores of Australian participants plunged into the Yarkon River after a makeshift bridge collapsed. Of the four who died, only one was drowned -- the three others were killed by toxins in the water.

In the past it was Israel's practice to simply pump raw waste liquids into the nearest body of water. "Most of our rivers became sewage canals," says Sarid. Although many municipalities are using treatment plants today, ecologists estimate that only a third of all sewage in Israel is properly treated before it is released into the environment. The Kishon, the country's most putrid river, flushes the sewage of half a million residents in the Haifa area plus the acidic waste water discharged by nearby chemical plants and oil refineries.

Although the beaches, crucial for tourism, are cleaner than the rivers, copious amounts of sewage still flow into the seas. Authorities began enforcing measures to contain such lethal outflows only after human effluent and offshore oil spills in the 1970s destroyed half the stunning coral reef in the shallows off Eilat, Israel's Red Sea port. Another pollutant is the nitrogen fertilizer Israeli farmers use to produce their famously immense crop yields. An official 1991 survey showed that about a third of all Israeli wells contained nitrate levels above the maximum allowed for drinking water in the U.S. and Europe.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the government began to crack down on municipal landfills, closing half of 500 unauthorized dumps. But a number of large sites still exist, their size a measure of the society's throwaway mentality. Israel dumps 91% of its household waste, compared to Japan's 20%. And the air in Israel is not much cleaner than the water. Levels of most pollutants, including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, are on the increase, primarily due to a four-fold jump in automobile use over the last 20 years. By the year 2000, the Environment Ministry expects smog to reach levels that are double its permitted maximum.

Aside from these pernicious poisons, Israel is, at the pedestrian level, a mess. Laws limiting smoking in public places are scarcely observed or enforced. Sidewalks are an obstacle course of dog excrement. Littering is a national plague; according to a government survey, 78% of those polled admit to it. Israelis talk a lot about their love of and commitment to the land of Israel. Their behavior, though, displays something closer to contempt.