Not only has the water level been rising, but its quality has also been improving. The salinity of the lake has dropped by about 6 percent compared with last year, the water authority said.
By Zafrir Rinat | Nov.20, 2012

By reducing its usual pumping from Lake Kinneret by 50% this year, the Israel Water Authority hopes it can raise the water level by about 60 centimeters by the end of the winter, it said yesterday.

The authority could reduce pumping from the lake, better known as the Sea of Galilee, partly because after years of relative drought, the the winter of 2011-2012 was a rainy one. Also, Israel is the world leader in using treated waste-water for agriculture, according to a report the authority released this week.

Israel uses 86 percent of its treated waste-water for agriculture, the report said. Israel is also increasingly using desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea.

Desalination is used to improve the quality of treated waste-water, the report said. That’s because one of the problems with using treated sewage has been its high salinity level, which can damage the ground and seep into groundwater.

Agricultural land that covers more than 1 million dunams, much of it in the Negev, is irrigated with this purified sewage.

If rainfall this winter is about at the level of the long-term average, the water authority plans to pump about 160 million cubic meters of water from the Kinneret this year, rather under half the 350 million cubic meters it pumps on average, the authority said.

This is the first year since 2008 that the amount of water in the Kinneret has not dropped below the lower red line, which indicates that the water has reached 213.18 meters below sea level, less than a meter above the level at which water cannot be pumped without damaging Israel’s water supply.

The water level remains 3.5 meters short of the upper red line, a less severe warning signal.

Not only has the water level been rising, but its quality has also been improving. The salinity of the lake has dropped by about 6 percent compared with last year, the water authority said.

Israel’s desalination facilities treated more than 300 million cubic meters of water this year – nearly half the water needed for household consumption. That rate could double again within two years, once two additional desalination plants are completed, one in Ashdod and one south of Rishon Letzion, and the existing facilities increase the amount of water they already treat.

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