Greenpeace Blocks Toxic Kishon River in Israel

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GREENPEACE BLOCKS TOXIC KISHON RIVER IN ISRAEL
Activists build a dam in Haifa bay to stop effluents reaching
Mediterranean

Haifa, northern Israel, 27 September 1998 - Greenpeace activists
today built a dam on the Kishon River to symbolically block
toxic effluents from flowing into the Mediterranean Sea.

The toxic effluents come mainly from the heavy petrochemical
industry along the river. The names of the main polluting
factories were visible on the dam that is made of yellow wood
panels.(1)  Activists held banner reading in English and Hebrew
"Happy Year of the Ocean ".

Among the activists were crew members of the Greenpeace ship
"Sirius" that is currently visiting Israel as a part of a
regional tour. The activities are in line with the current
United Nations-declared "Year of the Oceans".

The Kishon River is by far the most polluted river in Israel.
For years the heavy industry along its banks used the river as
an open industrial waste canal to divert their toxic effluents
into the Mediterranean. Regular monitoring of the river by the
Kishon authority and the National Oceanographic Institute has
showed that the effluents contain toxic heavy metals, untreated
municipal sewage and organic contaminants like organohalogens.
Samples that were taken by Greenpeace in 1994-95 also showed
similar results. (2)

To prevent floods, the Kishon riverbed is being regularly
dredged. Since the early 1990s the dredged mud has been stored
in open pools along the river. Samples that were taken from
those pools by Greenpeace and analyzed at the Greenpeace
International laboratory at Exeter University in Britain found
elevated levels of copper, zinc, chromium, cadmium and mercury.
In some cases, these levels were far in excess of background
concentrations expected for river sediments

"For too long the industries ignored the marine environment and
the health of the local population. The river is dead. We do not
want the Mediterranean Sea to have a similar fate," said Ofer
Ben Dov, Greenpeace Mediterranean campaigner in Israel. Israel
signed protocols related to the Barcelona convention for the
Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution, but it
has not yet ratified several ones including the 1995 protocol
regarding industrial pollution from land-based sources. As part
of a so-called solution, the Israeli authorities are planning to
build a pipe to pump "treated effluents" from the factories
directly into the Mediterranean. "This plan will help the Kishon
River but not the Mediterranean Sea because it would only mean
transferring the problem from one place to another," Ben Dov
said.

Greenpeace demands that the authorities cancel the bypass pipe
plans. The long-term solution is a phase out  of all toxic
substances discharge in line with the LBS protocols of the
Barcelona Convention.


NOTES

1. The names of the main polluting factories are: Haifa
refineries, Haifa Chemicals, Gadiv, Carmel Ulifinim, Gadiv
Petrochemicals, Deshanim. 2. Greenpeace's 1994-5 sampling
results of the Kishon river found the following heavy metals:
Cadmium, Zinc, Cooper, Nickel, Chrome and Mercury. Among the
organohalogens the following stood out: tetrachloroethane,
tribromomethane, tetrabromomethane, HCBD, and petachloroeth. All
are recognized as toxic and some are carcinogenic.  
Greenpeace Mediterranean Israel 
P O Box 14423 Tel Aviv 61143
Tel: 972 3 5102079
Fax: 972 3 5163301
gpmedisr@diala.greenpeace.org
http://www.greenpeace.org/~med