[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 162 (Tuesday, November 16, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2404]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


               THE IMPORTANCE OF WATER TO THE MIDDLE EAST

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 16, 1999

  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to reprint a 
brief article in the Jerusalem Report, October 25, 1999 that discusses 
the importance of water to the Middle East. This piece also highlights 
the important activities of a former colleague of ours, Hon. Wayne 
Owens, now president of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic 
Cooperation, who has taken a leading role in advocating the increased 
use of desalination plants in order to increase the inadequate water 
supplies in that region.
  Entitled, ``Not a Drop to Drink'', the article goes on to make a 
significant case for desalination. Accordingly, I recommend this 
article to our colleagues, and commend Wayne Owens for his ongoing 
efforts to improve the lives of all peoples in the region through 
economic development projects.

               [From the Jerusalem Report, Oct. 25, 1999]

                          Not a Drop to Drink

                          (By David Horovitz)

       More than a year ago, a former Utah Congressman named Wayne 
     Owens came to the Report, to tell us about a project his non-
     profit, Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace and 
     Economic Cooperation was advocating: The construction of a 
     $300-million desalination plant at the Haderah power station, 
     and of a second, smaller plant in Gaza, to help alleviate the 
     chronic water shortage.
       The Haderah plant alone, Owens said, would provide a fifth 
     of Israel's domestic water needs. It could be up and running 
     in three years. And it would not require Israeli government 
     funding. Rather, Owens was assembling a group of investors to 
     fund it. All he needed was a guarantee from the government 
     that it would purchase the desalinated water.
       But no guarantee was forthcoming. A spokesman at the 
     Infrastructure Ministry dismissed the project as 
     ``premature.''
       A few weeks ago, I had a call from a businessman in 
     Ireland. His company, Eagle Water Resources, had been 
     tentatively approached by Israeli officials last year to 
     investigate the viability of shipping water from Turkey to 
     Israel, aboard converted oil tankers. The project was 
     technically and economically feasible, he had established. He 
     had the tankers ready for conversion. What he needed was a 
     firm contract. Many months had passed; he had invested 
     $250,000; but no one was giving him the go-ahead.
       Israel is deep in the grip of a crippling drought. The 
     level of the Kinneret, depending on which experts you listen 
     to, has fallen either to a 65-year low, or to its lowest 
     level in centuries. Red lines are being crossed. 
     Environmentalists warn that Israel's reservoirs and 
     underground aquifers are being grossly over-pumped, and that 
     the damage, as the falling water sources become increasingly 
     saline, may be irrevocable. Farmers, rocked by a 40-percent 
     reduction in their water allocation this year, fear a 
     similar, or even graver, cut may be imposed on them next 
     year, and warn of irrevocable damage to agriculture. Israel 
     this year had to reduce the quantity of water it supplied to 
     Jordan under its peace-treaty commitment; next year, it may 
     have to struggle even harder to meet its obligation.
       If Wayne Owens or Eagle Water Resources were deemed 
     unsuitable drought-busters, being foreign, salvation lies 
     right here at home. McKorot, the national water carrier, runs 
     a desalination operation in Eilat that provides the city with 
     no less than 80 percent of its water. IDE Technologies, a 
     Ra'ananah-based firm, is a world leader in desalination. 
     Twenty years ago, it began a government-funded desalination 
     project at Ashdod, but the contract was scrapped a few years 
     later. Today, IDE reportedly holds a 30-percent share of the 
     world desalination market. The Israeli government is still 
     not particularly interested in its services.
       In a recent interview in the Yediot Ahronot daily, IDE'S 
     president and CEO David Waxman offered, ``as of tomorrow 
     morning,'' to start building a major desalination plant for 
     Israel. ``We're not looking for government funding or private 
     investors,'' he said. ``Our company will invest the necessary 
     $300 million. We're sell the water to the government at a 
     price lower than people pay now for the water that comes out 
     of their taps. And we'll turn the plant over to the 
     government after 20 years.''
       Waxman's phone did not ring the following morning. Israel's 
     water commissioner, Meir Ben-Meir, remarked airily that the 
     government would soon be soliciting bids for a desalination 
     plant. ``And IDE will be able to compete, along with 
     everybody else.''
       Amid the clamor of panicked environmentalists, desperate 
     farmers--and politicians and diplomats concerned by the 
     potential for the region's eternal water shortage to badly 
     strain relations with Jordan and the Palestinians, and 
     downright destroy prospects for peace with Syria--Ben-Meir, 
     uniquely it seems, is unconcerned. Even the Treasury, 
     hitherto obsessed with what it said was the relatively high 
     cost of desalinated water, has withdrawn longstanding 
     opposition to a major desalination drive. But Ben-Meir 
     comments mildly that the 213-meters-below-sea level Red Line 
     at the Kinneret is only an arbitrary figure--that a dip of 
     another few centimeters is no great disaster. When The Report 
     called him on October 4, the harrassed-sounding-commissioner 
     growled that he couldn't get any work done because of all the 
     media hounding, and barked irritably that ``there is no water 
     crisis.''
       Ben-Meir, one wants to assume, knows what he's talking 
     about. He is, after all, a 75-year-old veteran, the 
     ``manager,'' as he put it in our brief conservation, ``of 
     Israel's water resources,'' But just suppose, for a minute, 
     that all the other worried activities are right, and the 
     complacent Meir Ben-Meir is wrong. Isn't that a thought to 
     make your throat go dry?