By John — Desalination News
A “rare” algae bloom that knocked out most of Israel’s seawater desalination capacity in late August has drawn renewed attention to how closely the water systems of Israel and Gaza are intertwined, after scientists and journalists pointed to Gaza’s largely destroyed sewage infrastructure as a possible contributing factor to the bloom itself.
The bloom, made up of microscopic algae, formed a band extending at least 12 kilometres along Israel’s Mediterranean coastline and clogged the seawater intake pipes that feed the country’s desalination plants, which together supply more than 80 percent of Israel’s drinking water. By September 3, only one of Israel’s six coastal plants was operating at full capacity; by September 7, two plants remained fully closed and three others had been running at reduced output for nine consecutive days. National water utility Mekorot’s spokesperson, Lior Gutman, described the disruption as “unprecedented.” Edo Bar-Zeev, an associate professor of water research at Ben-Gurion University who has tested coastal water for two decades, said it was “the first time I saw something of this extent.”
Scientists believe the bloom originated near Egypt’s Nile Delta and was carried north along the coast by Mediterranean currents. Some environmental experts have suggested that untreated sewage discharged from Gaza may have added nutrients that helped fuel the bloom’s growth, though that causal link remains contested among researchers and has not been definitively established.
What is not in dispute is the scale of damage to Gaza’s own water and sanitation infrastructure. Nearly 90 percent of the territory’s water and sanitation assets have been destroyed or damaged since October 2023, including the majority of Gaza’s desalination capacity and all six of its wastewater treatment plants, which have been non-operational for months, allowing large volumes of untreated sewage to flow directly into the Mediterranean. Estimated damage to the sector runs to roughly $1.7 billion.
The two systems are also connected operationally: Mekorot supplies a portion of Gaza’s water through pipelines that were already running at reduced capacity because of identified leaks. When Israel’s own desalination plants went offline in late August, that supply line to Gaza was disrupted as well, compounding a crisis already underway. Gaza’s water production had fallen from around 300,000 cubic metres a day before the war to less than 120,000 cubic metres daily by February, with desalination output specifically falling from about 20,000 to 16,000 cubic metres a day by May. Microbiological contamination in Gaza water samples rose from under 6 percent in January to nearly 20 percent by August, and cases of acute watery diarrhea nearly doubled over the same period, from roughly 30,000 in March to more than 58,000 in August. The World Health Organization has warned that approaching winter rains could spread contaminated water further through displacement sites, raising the risk of a broader disease outbreak.
For Israel, the episode has prompted authorities to draw more heavily on the Sea of Galilee and other reservoirs and to restrict agricultural water use while desalination capacity is restored, underscoring how a single environmental event can strain a water system built around heavy reliance on a small number of coastal desalination plants. For Gaza, it has added a fresh layer of hardship to an already severe water crisis rooted in years of infrastructure destruction.
(Source: Arab News) (Source: The New Arab)