Lake Kinneret Almost Full

VIDEO Of The Week-Sea Of Galilee (Kinneret) rising-https://tinyurl.com/yb3lzdl6

From the Algemeiner by Benjamin Kerstein

For The Full Article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ybea3fjl 

After an unusually wet winter, Israel’s northern lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is set to be full for the first time in decades, Israeli news website N12 reported on Sunday.

After a weekend of heavy rains, the Kinneret rose by six centimeters, bringing the water level to 209 meters, only 21 centimeters from the “red line” that marks its full capacity.

Two-thirds of Israeli territory is desert, and the country usually contends with a lack rather than a surplus of water, but the last two years have brought higher than average rainfall following several years of drought.

The Kinneret once served as Israel’s main source of fresh water, but due to the fluctuation, the country has mostly switched over to other water sources and desalination. Now, however, Israel’s Water Authority is once again permitting the use of the lake as a water source.

Dr. Amir Givati, director of flood modeling at the company ClimaCell, told N12, “In just two years, the Kinneret has risen by more than 5.5 meters. The Kinneret will continue to rise in the coming days and already by the beginning of May the level is expected to stabilize for the first time since February 1992 at the top of the red line, which means a full Kinneret.”

In order to prevent flooding, the authorities will likely use the Degania Dam to release excess water into the Jordan River should the Kinneret continue to rise. Built in 1931, the dam has only been opened twice in Israel’s history – in 1969 and 1992, the last time the Kinneret was full.

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Worldwide Water Crisis

       

VIDEO Of The Week - Is the world going into a water crisis? https://tinyurl.com/y2j7rrlu

Israel 21 C, By Abigail Klein Leichman - For the full article go to -  https://tinyurl.com/yyjsuhzk

A visit to the country’s largest desalination and wastewater-treatment plants reveals smart technologies and policies to keep the water running.

Israel has solved its water crisis! That’s a typical headline about Israel’s world-leading smart water management and advanced water technology.

Five years into a severe drought, it’s more accurate to say that Israel is constantly inventing and implementing practical solutions to a problem that is not entirely solvable.

Due to climate change, Israel’s October-to-March rainy season has been reduced to a handful of torrentially rainy days, causing most of the precious liquid to be lost to runoff. The North’s waterways are no longer an abundant trickle-down source for much of the country; the Sea of Galilee is approaching its lowest-ever level.

Since 2005, wastewater reclamation and seawater desalination have become key in assuring an adequate supply — 2.1 billion cubic meters annually — to Israeli households, industry and agriculture.

Some 31 percent of irrigation water originates from wastewater treated at more than 150 plants. Treated brackish water (not as salty as seawater) is supplied from 45 plants for both agricultural and non-agricultural needs.

Sixty to 80% of Israel’s municipal water, adjusted according to season and real-time demand, flows from large coastal desal plants in Sorek, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Palmachim and Hadera.

“In 2014, we thought we had enough [desalinated water] capacity, 600 million cubic meters, that it didn’t matter how much [rain] God will supply in the winter,” says Yaacoby, chief of staff to the CEO of Mekorot, Israel’s national water carrier. “That was a mistake. We are lacking 100 million to 200 million cubic meters of water per year in Israel these days.”. Two more desalination plants are to be completed in the next few years. “Altogether, in 2025 we will be getting 1.1 billion cubic meters of desalinated water,” Yaacoby says.

Sorek, world’s largest desal plant

Operational since 2013, Sorek is the largest seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant in the world. It is operated for the government by water-treatment pioneer IDE Technologies, established in 1965 by Technion-trained scientists. IDE is now a multinational company with 400 desal and wastewater treatment installations in more than 40 countries.

Mekorot distributes the desalinated, quality-tested water (after essential minerals have been re-added) to 57 municipal water utilities throughout Israel. From Sorek, it costs about 55 cents per cubic meter; somewhat more from the other four plants.

By comparison, it costs 10 cents to get a cubic meter of freshwater from Israel’s natural sources – whose supply is fast declining. In some other countries, desalinated water costs as much as $3 per cubic meter.

Desalination normally uses chemicals, which present an environmental problem when the brine is discharged back to the sea. IDE uses chemical-free biological and physical processes customized for each installation.

To avoid harming the little fish and fish eggs that pass through the screens on the intake pipes bringing in 40,000 cubic meters of seawater per hour, IDE is developing “nursery” tanks where the creatures are harbored until they choose to swim back to their habitat via rotating doors.

Wastewater reclamation

Covering 250 acres, Shafdan is the biggest wastewater treatment plant in a country that recycles more water (85-90%) than anywhere else. The reclaimed water, which is close to drinking quality, is pumped to Negev farms for irrigation. Shafdan uses biological and mechanical means to treat all sewage effluent from the Dan (Greater Tel Aviv) region, home to approximately 250,000 to 300,000 people, Shafdan, established in 1955, receives 470,000 cubic meters of raw sewage daily. Reclaiming the water from this sewage supplies 140 million cubic meters to Israeli farms annually just from this one facility.

Clouds and leaks

Mekorot’s WaTech runs several R&D centers that collaborate with industry and academia. One of these centers is at Shafdan, where there is an urgent need for more compact treatment methods in order to free up some of the valuable real estate on which the plant sits. A variety of pilot projects will determine the best path forward.

Cloud seeding was once thought a promising procedure for squeezing more rain from the skies. But experiments have been disappointing so far. Right now there is only one small cloud-seeding experiment over the Sea of Galilee.

That sea – actually a lake, called the Kinneret in Hebrew — today supplies a mere 50 million cubic meters of water to area villages in Israel and 50 million to Jordan every year. There is a new plan to take desalinated seawater from the new plants to enrich the Sea of Galilee by 2030,

More helpful in boosting available water supply is Israel’s exceptionally low rate of leakage, he adds. In most countries, an average of 30% of expensive treated water is lost through leakage before reaching customers. “Israel’s leakage rate is lowest in the world, on average 7-8%,” says Yaacoby. This is partly because Israel’s distribution infrastructure is relatively young and isn’t subject to extreme temperature fluctuations that can burst pipes.

The Israeli startup Utilis

 is revolutionizing leak detection, using satellite-mounted radar — developed originally to find water on Mars and Venus — to map out where drinking water is escaping from the system. Since 2016, Utilis technology has been employed in 27 countries including China, US and UK.

Assuring a wet future

While Israeli knowhow and technology have a well-deserved place in the world spotlight, conservation and awareness are critically important in assuring adequate and affordable water, emphasizes Oded Distel, director of Israel NewTech in the Ministry of Economy and Industry.

“Whatever we eat or wear is tightly connected to water consumption,” he says. “Every cup of coffee takes 130 liters to produce from the phase of growing the beans to our cup. A pair of jeans takes 1,320 liters. One kilogram of steak takes 15,400 liters.”

The coming generation will only have enough access to safe water if countries stop wasteful practices like flood irrigation, get leakage under control, and incentivize conservation by charging consumers the actual cost of water.

“People have long expected to get water for free, and that is a big obstacle to building sustainable systems and leads to people not getting any water or low-quality water. When people pay for something it has a value and they are motivated to use it more efficiently.”

Distel believes Israel can serve as a role model for its reliable, sustainable, centralized water system in an arid land where there is no private ownership of water and everyone gets a monthly water bill.

“The outcome is that wherever you are in Israel, when you open the tap you get high-quality drinking water, which is not something that happens everywhere in the world,” Distel says.

Click here to find out about WaterLine, Israel NewTech’s English-language podcast dealing with water issues in the global arena.

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Israel’s high-tech diplomacy in Africa

Video of the week - Innovation Africa - http://tinyurl.com/y85je6cv

Article by Ferry Biedermann 6.6.2017

For the full article go to -   http://tinyurl.com/yapgtsh2

Israel is paying renewed attention to Africa over the last few years, not only as a diplomatic arena and an area of cooperation on security but also as an increasingly important market for its companies, with an emphasis on high-tech.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the West African economic community summit in Liberia over the weekend, less than a year after he toured East Africa, and he's due to attend another summit in Togo before the end of the year.

While Netanyahu has said that he hopes improved relations with Africa will prop up Israel's diplomatic position at international forums such as the United Nations, that effort seems to be supported by, and go hand in hand with, an economic drive. In Liberia, Israeli solar power company Energiya Global announced a $20 million investment in a new solar field to supply electricity.

Africa is expected to account for 50 percent of the world's population growth through 2050, currently has the fastest growing middle class and saw an explosive 58 percent mobile broadband growth rate from 2015 to 2016, according to 2016 a PwC report entitled, Disrupting Africa: Riding the wave of the digital revolution.

Among the Israeli companies presenting in New York last year were life sciences firm MobileODT, which makes devices and networked solutions that allow medical diagnostics using mobile phones and Water-gen, which makes devices that literally make clean drinking water from the air. MobileODT is currently active in Africa while Water-gen sees great opportunities, with 40 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa living in water scarce environments.

"I think there is an amazing range of opportunity, despite the fact that the market moves still a little bit slower than Western and Northern markets, the African continent is an exceptional place for companies to grow in," says a representative of  MobileODT . One of the continent's advantages is that it is able to "leapfrog" to new technology because older, more established, and more expensive, systems are often not in place.

In Africa, MobileODT currently sells a device it calls EVA, for enhanced visual assessment, that in combination with a mobile phone can be used by non-expert medical staff to detect either cervical cancer or oral cancer or can be used for sexual assault documentation. It sends the information to centralized servers and follows up on the patient's progress.

"With a technology such ours, which is small, affordable and significantly more powerful than existing medical devices because of its connectivity and ability for collaboration and database management and machine-learning, while the United States is an interested market and we're able to sell pretty regularly there, in Africa the potential to impact is so much more significant," says a representative of  MobileODT .

Water-gen also has big plans for Africa once it starts mass production of its devices to make water from the air later this year. Executive chairman Maxim Pasik says that his company is currently talking to African partners to start selling the devices on the continent. He sees opportunities both in the form of aid projects and selling to governments.

"The most important is through government projects. The people don't have a lot of money but the governments still needs to provide water to drink because drinking water means stability for the country," says Pasik. He also sees a big role for the UN and the World Bank in helping to bring clean drinking water to African populations.

His company's products are ideal for Africa, he says because they can be installed anywhere, can run even on solar energy and are cheap in use. "We created a system that is affordable for Africa and the rest of the developing world. Energy consumption is very low, it's around 300 watts per liter of clean drinking water. And the quality of the water, it's the cleanest water you can have. There's zero chance of having bacteria inside."

He's convinced his product can help prevent millions of deaths from unhealthy drinking water and says that the company went out of its way to make it affordable, also in acquisition.

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12 TOP WAYS ISRAEL FEEDS THE WORLD (Part 2)

By Israel 21C

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/p9subll

Food security is a major concern for our rapidly growing planet. As resources dwindle and the population rises, smart solutions for better agriculture and safer food storage are essential.

No other single country – certainly not one as young and as tiny as Israel – has contributed more breakthroughs in this area than Israel.

Since the 1950s, Israelis have not only been finding miraculous ways to green their own desert but have shared their discoveries far and wide through channels including MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

ISRAEL21c has highlighted dozens of food-related advances pioneered by Israelis. Here are 12 major ways Israel helps feed the world.

7. Squeezing every drop of water from the air

Tal-Ya Water Technologies developed reusable plastic trays to collect dew from the air, reducing the water needed by crops or trees by up to 50 percent.

The square serrated trays, made from non-PET recycled and recyclable plastic with UV filters and a limestone additive, surround each plant or tree. With overnight temperature change, dew forms on both surfaces of the Tal-Ya tray, which funnels the dew and condensation straight to the roots. If it rains, the trays heighten the effect of each millimeter of water 27 times over.

Inventor and CEO Avraham Tamir told ISRAEL21c that the trays also block the sun so weeds can’t take root, and protect the plants from extreme temperature shifts. “Farmers need to use much less water, and in turn much less fertilizer on the crop,” which translates to less groundwater contamination.

8. Unparalleled crop protection

Two years ago, Hebrew University’s tech-transfer company teamed with Makhteshim Agan, a world leader in crop protection products, to develop and commercialize slow-release herbicides and a targeted insecticide that doesn’t harm beneficial insects.

The total worldwide herbicide market is valued at more than $15 billion, of which approximately a quarter is dedicated to soil-applied herbicides and other pesticides. The Israeli approach incorporates herbicides into micelles or vesicles, which are absorbed onto negatively charged clay minerals to enable a slow and controlled release, reducing leaching to deeper soil layers. This enhances efficiency and reduces the required doses.

The novel insecticide kills caterpillars of night-flying moths – a common scourge for farmers worldwide – but unlike common commercial preparations, has minimal or no effect on any other creature. High levels of control can be achieved with much less product, greatly minimizing environmental impact.

9. Fishing in the desert

Overfishing is a serious threat to the food supply, a grave situation since fish is the main source of protein for hundreds of millions of people. But what if fish could be raised virtually anywhere, even in the desert? That is just what the Israel’s GFA (Grow Fish Anywhere) Advanced Systems has made possible.

The Israeli “zero-discharge” system eliminates the environmental problems in conventional fish farming, and doesn’t depend on electricity or proximity to a body of water. Specially developed microbes purify fish waste byproducts right in the tank, with no need for spillage and refilling.

The largest facility using GFA technology, in New York, produced about 100 tons of sea bream, bass and tilapia in 2010.

10. Food from greenhouse gas

Israel’s Seambiotic clean-tech company recently launched a commercial algae farm in China and does business in the United States and Italy as well.

People don’t eat algae, but algae ponds nourished by power-plant effluent conserve farmed produce for human consumption because they generate 30 times more feedstock for biofuel than do land-based crop alternatives.

Plus, the tiny plants, which thrive on carbon dioxide and sunlight, produce a valuable nutraceutical food additive that is especially popular in the Far East.

11. Reintroducing carp to Africa

Half a century ago, Lake Victoria carp was a significant part of the diet of the nearby Ugandan villagers. But when Nile perch was introduced to the lake, it decimated most of the smaller fish including the carp. Villagers had neither the equipment nor the expertise necessary to start fishing the huge perch, and symptoms of protein deficiency started becoming apparent in their children.

Prof. Berta Sivan of Hebrew University came to the rescue with a multiyear project near to help these African families. Her team was able to apply techniques developed over many years for Israeli fish farmers.

The Israeli project not only successfully spawned carp on Ugandan fish farms, but also provided training on how to dig and fill ponds and raise the small fish. Now local children have an abundant supply of protein to eat with their fruit and vegetables.

12. Hardier seeds for better crops

Hebrew University agricultural scientists Ilan Sela and Haim D. Rabinowitch developed TraitUP, a trademarked technology that enables the introduction of genetic materials into seeds without modifying their DNA. This method immediately and efficiently improves plants before they’re even sowed.

The university’s Yissum Research Development technology transfer company licensed the seed treatment technology to Morflora Israel for curing fruit-tree diseases in orchards and groves, and for seedling treatment in the nursery.

“The new ability to deliver traits within days instead of years, and to offer a treatment with results similar to breeding to all current species, answers a long and unmet need that will revolutionize modern agriculture and significantly impact the vegetable and commodity crop markets,” said Dotan Peleg, CEO of Morflora.

Video of the week: http://tinyurl.com/pgxj3jv

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