One of Israel’s largest and most important water reservoirs is under threat. Last week, the Ministry of Health ordered Mekorot, the national water company, to close seven of its water drilling sites along the Shikma Stream due to sewage flowing from a collapsed waste treatment plant. Senior officials from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Environmental Protection have accused the Water Authority of responsibility for the ongoing failure and warned that the continued discharge of wastewater into the stream may endanger the "Shikma Reservoir," one of the largest emergency groundwater reservoirs in Israel.

Indeed, when environmental experts took a sample earlier this month from wastewater that had leaked into the stream, they found vibrio cholerae – the potentially life-threatening bacteria that causes cholera. It was only after a group of children from one of the kibbutzim in the Western Negev swan in the stream that the Ministry of Health issued a warning. In response, Mekorot said that “there is no concern that there will be a water shortage. We are supplying water from alternative sources.”

The pollution in the stream | Watch

Eight months of intermittent sewage

In late May 2024, the Sderot-Sha’ar Hanegev sewage treatment plant collapsed, and thousands of cubic meters of raw sewage and low-quality wastewater were leaked into the Shikma Stream – one of the most vital and sensitive in the Western Negev area. The treatment plant collapsed because a crack in one of the tanks spread and brought operations to a halt at four of the facility’s six tanks.

“The small fissures became cracks which became chasms – and the sewage just burst out,” says one official from the Ministry of Environmental Protection about the incident some eight months ago, adding that “this is a significant engineering failure, which appears to have existed for quite some time.” Shomrim has discovered that representatives from the Environmental Health Unit in the Ministry of Health’s Ashkelon District warned for many months about the damage to the plant – but the company that operates it claimed that everything was in working order.

The Sderot-Sha’ar Hanegev sewage treatment plant manages domestic and industrial waste from communities in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council and the nearby city of Sderot and it is jointly owned by those local authorities. The plant is operated by a company called BlueGen, which is responsible for handling tens of thousands of cubic meters of waste a day and providing farmers in the region with purified wastewater.

Some six weeks after the incident, BlueGen claimed that it had rectified the problem, and that sewage was once again being treated to a level that makes it suitable for agricultural use – known as secondary quality wastewater. However, tests carried out by officials from the Ministry of  Health in mid-July raised suspicions that the company had misrepresented the facts and that the pollutant level of the wastewater that was earmarked for orchards, mango groves and avocado trees was thousands of times higher than the permitted level for agricultural use.

Citing danger to public health, the Ministry of Health banned the plant from supplying water to agricultural reservoirs and from there to orchards and fields. Senior Ministry of Health officials used words like “catastrophe” to describe this extremely concerning incident. “It’s the kind of thing that happens in Third World countries,” says one senior official from the Water Authority – the body responsible for managing Israel’s water and sewage infrastructure.

“Israel’s sewage treatment plants are collapsing,” says a water and sewage expert. “Many of them were not upgraded in time and exceeded their capacities – or are close to that point"

The incident did not end, however, on that day in late May, when the cracks in the tank gave way and sewage leaked into the stream and it has continued to flow intermittently since then. Despite the fact that the company which operates the Sderot-Sha’ar Hanegev sewage treatment plant has been replaced, and orders have been given to fast-track work on it, the wastewater it supplies still does not meet the standards required to be used in agriculture. In the absence of any other infrastructure, the untreated sewage is flowing into the stream.

According to assessments, more than half a million cubic meters of sewage have flowed into the stream as a result of the ongoing issues at the Sderot-Sha’ar Hanegev sewage treatment plant. “I cannot remember such a serious incident in the past,” says Nitzan Ezra, director of the Water and Sewage Division at the Environmental Protection Ministry. The ministry’s Green Police launched a criminal investigation into the company that operated the facility, focusing on possibly substandard maintenance work and allegations of false reporting to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

The pollution in the stream | Watch

Groundwater under threat of pollution

The most pressing concern among all the experts and officials involved in managing this crisis is that untreated wastewater will make its way into the Shikma Reservoir, which collects floodwater that ends up in the coastal aquifer. According to experts, the Shikma facility produces 6 million cubic meters of drinking water a year and any pollution to it would have a dramatic effect on the whole water sector. “The moment the pollution reaches the Shikma Reservoir, it will take 20 years to clean it,” warns one Ministry of Environmental Protection official. “Pollution is dynamic, so we have to hurry.”

To highlight the potential danger to Israel’s water sector, the Ministry of Health received a report on January 14 about yet another discharge of low-quality effluent from the treatment plant into the Shikma Stream – but this time the wastewater crossed Highway 4 to the west, raising concerns that it would seep into the groundwater in that area. The ministry immediately ordered Mekorot to halt production at seven water drilling sites in the area. These sites provide drinking water. Mekorot said in response that it had halted operations and that it has started to supply water from alternative sources. “Fortunately, water consumption is lower in winter, so we do not anticipate any disruption to domestic water supply,” one Mekorot official said.

Even before the Ministry of Health issued its order to Mekorot, the  Ministry of Environmental Protection banned entry into the Shikma Stream after tests last weekend found the presence of vibrio cholerae in the wastewater that the plant was pumping into the stream. Yotam Avizohar from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel says that the order was issued after it became known that children from a nearby kibbutz were exposed to polluted water in the stream. “This ongoing problem has caused – and continues to cause – massive damage,” Avizohar says. “From foul odors and mosquitoes infected with the West Nile virus to damage to flora and fauna. It will take years to recover.”

“Just like how the government functioned at the start of the [October 2023] war, we have encountered the same pattern of managerial failure in the Water Authority and the various government ministries”

Various experts who spoke to Shomrim point the finger of blame at the Water Authority, accusing it of not managing the crisis properly. “Just like how the government functioned at the start of the [October 2023] war, we have encountered the same pattern of managerial failure in the Water Authority and the various government ministries, which seem incapable of working together or making informed decisions to minimize the dangers,” says one expert from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

“Israel’s sewage treatment plants are collapsing,” says another water and sewage expert who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of them were not upgraded in time and exceeded their capacities – or are close to that point. The upshot of this is that any fault causes an overflow or the quality of the water supplied to farmers is unacceptably low.” According to this expert, the Water Authority is currently weaker than ever; he cites as evidence the fact that money that was earmarked for rebuilding work on the country’s sewage treatment plants was frozen – under pressure from the energy minister, who was desperate to avoid having to hike up water prices.

According to data published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection  in its report into the state of Israel’s 90 large sewage treatment plants, no fewer than 25 were close to or had exceeded their production limits. “The quantity of raw sewage produced in Israel has grown year by year in accordance with the population growth. From 2018 to 2020, the quantity of raw sewage increased by 24 million cubic meters – but the number of sewage treatment plants and their capacity did not increase to match this,” the report stated.

The figures show another worrying fact: 18 of Israel’s sewage treatment plants do not have a license and deficiencies were found in the wastewater supplied to farmers in around one third of them.