Greenpeace Warns of of Israeli "Bhopal" Tragedy in Negev

["Greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

GREENPEACE WARNS NETANYAHU OF  
ISRAELI "BOPHAL" TRAGEDY IN THE NEGEV 
 
Tel Aviv, 18 February 1997 - The Greenpeace 
Mediterranean Office called on Israeli Premier 
Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the parliament 
to take seriously a warning from the US 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and to 
initiate a clean up program in the hazardous waste 
dump in Ramat Hovav, the Negev. 
 
In a letter sent today to Netanyahu and MPs, 
Greenpeace said that a recent EPA finding on Ramat 
Hovav in the Negev desert confirmed concerns that a 
tragedy like the one in Bhopal, India, could occur 
there any day. (1) The EPA warning exactly repeats 
Greenpeace's position on Ramat Hovav which was 
released in a report in July last year. (2).  
 
An EPA delegation recently visited the site and 
warned Israeli officials that a major accident "with 
potentially serious consequences to human life and 
health" could take place in Ramat Hovav at any time. 
"Such a site in the US would certainly be a prime 
candidate for a federal emergency clean up", the EPA 
said. (3)  
 
"Israeli officials can no longer ignore this problem," 
said in Tel Aviv Ory Zik, Greenpeace Meditteranean 
campaigner in Israel, in the letter to Netanyahu and 
the MPs. 
 
"Greenpeace and the US EPA are warning from a 
disaster in Ramat Hovav and call for an immediate 
clean up of the site. What other alarm bells are Israeli 
officials waiting for before they take actions?" he 
added. 
 
The so called "solution" that Israeli officials are 
proposing for Ramat Hovav is a toxic waste 
incinerator expected to start operation this spring. 
This project will just escalate the current situation 
that turns the Negev into a "toxic sacrifice zone" and 
will be a counter incentive to any waste minimization 
strategy.  
 
Incinerators are a major source of toxic substances 
like dioxins and furans. Incinerators are no longer 
accepted in most of the developed world. In the US, 
the construction of any waste incinerator has been 
practically impossible for more than a decade.   
 
Greenpeace calls on Premier Netanyahu to cancel the 
incineration plans in Ramat Hovav. Instead, the first 
step should be to characterize the toxic waste there 
and safely store it above ground. The solution should 
be phasing out toxic materials in all industrial 
processes, in the framework of a national clean 
production strategy. (4) 
 
Last week, Greenpeace exposed the import of dirty 
technology from the US -  a mobile toxic waste 
incinerator that recently arrived to the port city of 
Haifa. It was originally built to clean up the oil 
disaster caused by the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska 
eight years ago. 
 
For more information and visual material please 
contact in Tel Aviv Ory Zik, Israel Campaigner, or 
Tirtsa Kisch, ++ 972-3-5102079 or ++972-
52433694; or Dr. Mario Damato, Executive Director 
of  Greenpeace Mediterranean in Malta, ++356-
667167. emails: 
ory.zik(green2.greenpeace.org 
greenpeace.mediterranean(green2.greenpeace.org 
 
Attention editors: The EPA letter can be obtained 
from us upon request. 
NOTES: 
 
(1)  2,500 people died in one night after the a 
chemical explosion in a factory in Bhopal in 1984. 
Hundreds died later and hundreds of thousands were 
permanently injured. 
(2) The Abstract of Greenpeace's report to Ramat 
Hovav: This report summarizes the problem of 
hazardous waste in Israel, with a focus on Ramat 
Hovav and the waste incineration which is planned 
there. The Israeli law demands that all the hazardous 
waste that is produced in the country be transferred 
to the hazardous waste disposal site in Ramat Hovav. 
The toxic organic waste is piling up, waiting for 
incineration. Most of this waste can be detoxified via 
existing non-incineration technologies.  
 
The incinerator intended for Ramat Hovav is now 
being built in the US. This incinerator is part of a 
'wave' of similar projects in SE Asia, Eastern Europe 

and the SE Mediterranean. As in the Israeli case, 
these projects are usually promoted by western 
corporations that can no longer sell incineration 
technologies in their own countries.  
Waste incineration is recognized as a major global 
source of toxic substances such as dioxins and 
furans. The alternative is a preventive strategy in the 
framework of clean production. The implementation 
of this approach should start with a governmental 
policy as exemplified in some western precedents. 
Israel is a country with limited natural resources and 
relatively developed human resources. Therefore it is 
a prototype of a country that can adopt clean 
production, yet we witness a policy that turn the 
Negev mountain into a 'toxic sacrifice zone'. 
 
(3) Shortly after visiting Ramat Hovav, Dr. Peter 
Preuss from the EPA wrote on 24 December 1996 a 
letter to Ms. Nehama Ronen, director general of the 
Israeli Ministry of the Environment. 
 
The EPA delegation was alarmed by the attitude of 
the people running the site, as the letter points out: 
"Their general opinion was that 'business as usual' 
was likely to lead to additional fires, explosions, and 
release of hazardous substances that could threaten 
the lives and health of people in the proximity of the 
facility... Dealing with Ramat Hovav is likely to be 
expensive and difficult but I really believe that 
addressing the problems of the facility could 
legitimately occupy the top of your list of things to 
do." 
 
 (4) Officially, some 7,000 factories produce in Israel 
annually about 100,000 tons of hazardous waste, 
with only a small portion of this dumped in Ramat 
Hovav. An additional thousands of tons of hazardous 
waste are illegally dumped in nature, in landfills, into 
rivers and in the Mediterranean Sea. The Ramat 
Hovav today hosts more than 50,000 tons of 
hazardous waste in huge ponds or in leaking and 
rusty barrels in the sand.