By John — Desalination News
The unprecedented shutdown of five of Israel’s six desalination plants has exposed a deeper strategic weakness, water-policy and national-security experts say: the country’s near-total dependence on a small number of large coastal facilities for its drinking water.
All of the affected plants sit along the southern Mediterranean coast and were forced offline together after microalgae, swept north by waves from the Nile Delta, fouled their seawater intakes. Because desalination supplies up to 80% of Israel’s drinking water, a single environmental event along one stretch of coastline was enough to put most of the national system at risk at once.
Experts argue the episode strengthens the case for diversifying both the geography and the technology behind Israel’s water supply, rather than continuing to concentrate capacity in a handful of mega-plants along the same coastline. Options raised include accelerating inland and northern sites, and looking again at distributed or subsea approaches that don’t share a single point of failure with the existing fleet.
The timing adds pressure to plans already in motion: Israel opened a tender only days earlier for a major new plant in the Emek Hefer Industrial Zone, and a seventh facility in the Western Galilee is due online in 2027. Analysts say those additions will help, but argue a fuller strategic review is needed to ensure Israel’s water security doesn’t hinge so heavily on conditions off one stretch of coast.
(Source: The Times of Israel)