Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the world's largest fertilizer producer, on Thursday abandoned its takeover bid for Israel Chemicals, saying it would not pursue the acquisition due to growing opposition from Israeli politicians and company employees.
PotashCorp, which owns just under 14% of ICL, renewed its efforts to gain full control of the world's sixth-largest potash producer at the end of last year. CEO Bill Doyle met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last fall to lobby for the deal, but the bid met staunch opposition from labor unions and many politicians, including Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who recently vowed to block the takeover bid.
A Jordanian senior official affirmed this week that his government supports the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea Conduit and regards it as an essential step in battling the severe water shortage in Jordan.
Saad Abu Hamour - secretary general of the Jordan Valley Authority and Jordanian head of the Israel Jordan Joint Water Committee - assured participants of the Ashdod Sustainability Conference this week that Jordan would support the proposed conduit from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The so-called Two Seas Canal is a joint Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian project intended to provide potable water to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It would also bring sea water to stabilize the Dead Sea water level.
One of the key global market players in the agriculture, food and fertilizers industry is located right here in Israel. ICL Fertilizers is a global company whose products meet the basic trends and key needs of world development and population growth. There is much public criticism about the company these days, and many associate it with the decline of the Dead Sea. However, the company always stresses the need to protect the environment.
After almost a decade of arguments over the feasibility of a proposed pipeline between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, the World Bank has released a series of reports that declare the project feasible from an engineering, economic and environmental standpoint.
But while the Regional Development Ministry welcomed the reports as an important step toward implementing the project, the environmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East said the findings ought to definitively bury the idea.
Update 4 March - The Red-Dead Canal, or Back to Nature? JerusalemPost.com
Update 13 February - Environmentalists Slam Red-Dead Sea Plan JerusalemPost.com
An ambitious plan to build a pipeline to carry water from the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea lurched forward this month, after the World Bank held hearings to gather public comments on the proposal. But environmentalists charge that alternative plans to save the Dead Sea would be cheaper, more flexible and would have less impact on the region’s ecosystems.
If the project proceeds, a 180-kilometre buried pipeline will carry up to 2 billion cubic metres (m3) of sea water per year from the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea through Jordanian territory to the Dead Sea.
Sinkholes are depressions or holes in the land surface caused by karst processes that generally takes place slowly but can open suddenly, drawing in everything above. These craters, abundant on the western side of the Dead Sea (near Ein Gedi, Israel), stem from a severe water shortage, magnified in recent years by the reduction in the amount of water flowing in the Sea's main tributary, the Jordan River.
The Dead Sea's water level has declined over 80 ft (25 m) from 1939 to 1999 -- it's now shrunk by about one third of its mid-1960s volume.
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has called for the country’s policymakers to save the special habitats that make up the country’s dwindling salt marshes, in a newly released 30-page report titled "The Salt Marshes of Israel – Extreme and Unique Living Environment."
Some portions of salt marshes have survived along the Kishon River banks, but face the threat of urban development, says the report.
Meanwhile, some salt marshes in the Dead Sea region have been either destroyed or disrupted, as the basin’s water level changed.
In the arid plains of the northeast Negev Desert, the Beduin village of Hura is one step closer to becoming home to a blossoming eco-village rife with flora and fauna, as well as renewable energy.
Upon completion, the approximately 40-hectare (99-acre) site will sit adjacent to Road 31 near Hura, at a junction that connects the roads leading to Arad and the Dead Sea.
A test conducted recently revealed that the Dead Sea rose ten centimeters since its last monthly measurement, the first recorded increase in volume for the iconic and endangered body of water in ten years.
The higher level is the result of runoff from the fierce storm that swept across Israel two weeks ago, bringing record levels of rainfall and causing the Sea of Galilee to rise by some 70 centimeters, with more expected after the winter runoff.
While we don’t celebrate the energy crisis and financial woes in Jordan, it is poor finances that’s reportedly putting the highly controversial Red-Dead Canal on hold, Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported.
The original plan which called for a canal between the Red Sea in the south up to the Dead Sea in the North to “save” the shrinking Dead Sea, has had environmentalists up in arms.
Environmental concerns will be a decisive issue in this January’s upcoming election as the country looks forward to taking care of its future generations, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund Chairman Efi Stenzler told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
One of KKL-JNF’s newest projects that it is trying to push forward is the development of a canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea. As opposed to the path from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, this route would contain flat land and would be ideal for a hydroelectric industry, ultimately supplying much-needed water to the Israeli and Jordanian Dead Sea regions as well, Stenzler explained.
This is a very informative article - highly recommended!
Many years ago the Jordan was massive, clean and full of fish. Now it is a small, polluted river that is known mostly as a baptism site for Christian tourists, writes Amir Ben David. But after a long struggle, environmental groups have finally broken through and are working with Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to reinvigorate the river.
Nachal Kidron is a main river which begins in the old city of Jerusalem and ends in the Dead Sea area. It is one of the most contaminated rivers in Israel, the main reason being the sewage which comes from the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods and which is discharged to the river without purification or after partial purification.
"Green Now" has commissioned an independent opinion regarding this matter which clearly states that it is necessary to construct a treatment facility for the sewage waters in order to resolve the issue.
"Our results are dramatic; they indicate how vulnerable the Dead Sea ecosystems are," says Prof. Litt. "They clearly show how surprisingly fast lush Mediterranean sclerophyll vegetation can morph into steppe or even desert vegetation within a few decades if it becomes drier."
Back then, the consequences in terms of agriculture and feeding the population were most likely devastating. The researchers want to probe even further back into the climate past of the region around the Dead Sea by drilling even deeper.
Biosphere Reserves are sites established by countries and recognized under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme to promote sustainable development based on local community efforts and sound science. They are places that seek to reconcile conservation of biological and cultural diversity and economic and social development through partnerships between people and nature, with cooperation from local to international scales.
Currently, there are 598 Biosphere Reserves in 117 countries , and new sites are added every year. Would the Dead Sea join them someday?
Growing the most crop per drop of water is an Israeli specialty. With little rain and a hot desert sun as unforgiving as the Sahara, Israel's high-tech researchers and farmers have combined their expertise to grow a cornucopia of salt-tolerant crops in dry desert conditions. People from hungry countries far and wide come to learn from Israel's expertise.
Now, a new research project by two desert research institutes has strung several Israeli agriculture and clean-tech specialties together to help alleviate world hunger and push back the desert through an artificial desert oasis using low-cost desalination technology that runs on solar power.
A team of scientists has developed a method of more precisely predicting the development sinkholes by the Dead Sea, which should make the area safer for visitors and people working there.
Researchers say use of an Italian earth-observation satellite system known as Cosmo-Skymed has significantly improved their ability to predict when and where sinkholes will form. The technology should give them a few month's notice before a sinkhole actually appears.
The River Jordan is neither deep nor wide these days. The Biblical river, which has inspired countless spirituals and folk songs, is just a narrow stream in many parts - polluted and stagnant. But that is about to change.
Thanks to desalination and wastewater recycling, there is more fresh water to go around and the River Jordan will slowly be returned to its former glory.
Israel Chemicals will pay 80% of the estimated NIS 3.8 billion in costs to curb the rising Dead Sea evaporation pool and protect the nearby hotels, the company said yesterday after coming to an agreement with the government.
The project entails dredging the salt residue that is causing the pond to rise.
The level of the Dead Sea's northern basin dropped 11 centimeters during the month of June, to 426.13 meters below sea level, according to data from the Water Authority's Hydrological Services. In May, there was a drop of 7 centimeters, while in April there was a drop of 15 centimeters.
A project to preserve rare vegetation at Ein Gedi has been altered after scientists complained that the plan could endanger an ongoing ecological study in the same area.
The plant-preservation project sponsored by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority relates to rare types of vegetation brought to Ein Gedi from Sudan - including mini tropical trees that once flourished in the region but became extinct. It had been decided to erect a fence around the saplings to protect them from foraging animals, but the same area is also the locus of a long-term study by researchers from Tel Aviv University on desert rodents.
Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL) today announced that the High Court of Justice last Thursday rejected petitions filed by the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel against Israel Chemicals subsidiary Dead Sea Works, the Israeli government and the Ministry of Finance over the government's decision on a permanent solution for the water level in the Dead Sea's southern basin and royalties that Israel Chemicals will pay the government for mining Dead Sea minerals.
Satellite data, reported this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth, indicate that the terrain within a few dozen kilometers of the Dead Sea rose as much as 4.3 millimeters per year, with the largest increases taking place along the lake's shore.
The slight rise in landscape stems directly from the decline in lake level, the scientists explain. Less water in the 67-kilometer-long lake means less weight pressing down on the surrounding terrain, so Earth's crust has rebounded upward - a faster, smaller-scale version of what happened when massive ice sheets melted at the end of the last ice age.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have created a man-made oasis in the desert with the successful application of a solar-powered desalination system that provides water for irrigation in arid regions.
The research was conducted in the Arava Valley of Israel, south of the Dead Sea at a facility that produces environmentally sustainable crops in arid environments. The Arava basin is extremely dry and its agricultural activities rely extensively on brackish groundwater from local aquifers
On a recent day trip to the Dead Sea, I took pictures of the water from the bus window. Egged bus #444 traveled south on Highway 90 leaving at 7am and returned north at 4pm.
Three separate Landsat satellites captured false-color images showing an evolution over time of the Dead Sea, also called Salt Sea - the lowest surface feature on Earth - located between Israel and Jordan. The top image is from Landsat 1, acquired September 15, 1972. The middle image is from Landsat 4, acquired on August 27, 1989. The third image is from Landsat 7 on October 11, 2011.
Abandoned army bunkers along the Jordan River have become a habitat for 12 indigenous bat species, three of which are already designated as endangered and two that are on the critical list. The bats were recently identified by a group of Tel Aviv University researchers who were granted access to the bunkers, spread out along a 60-mile-long stretch of land between the Sea of Galilee in the north of Israel to the Dead Sea's northern edge.
The cabinet approved the planning and construction of a NIS 37 million network of birdwatching centers for the Negev and Galilee.
In addition to upgrading three existing centers – in Kfar Rupin, Maagan Michael and Eilat – the budget will allow for the construction of four new centers, in Sde Boker, Ein Gedi, Lotan and Hatzeva.
Israel Chemicals' Dead Sea Industries does not need to immediately mine the salt collecting in its evaporation pools, the National Infrastructure Committee ruled last week, drawing criticism from environmental watchdogs for what they called another capitulation to the company.
As part of a previous compromise, the state determined the company would be responsible for - and pay the bulk of the cost of - clearing out the salt pools, which are threatening to overflow and flood hotels along the Dead Sea.
Tech Ingenuity Helps Desert Bloom with Produce - Walking along a row of tomato plants, researcher Naftali Lazerovitch points out a sophisticated set of electric sensors that constantly measure moisture to provide the proper balance. Lazerovitch can get readings any time of day simply by checking a readout sent to his smartphone.
Remote Arava Needs More People, Mayor Says - The Arava Valley, midway between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea and bordering on Jordan, represents six per cent of Israel's land mass, yet it is home to only .04 per cent of its population, or 3,219 people. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep them.
After the cabinet unanimously approved a five-year, NIS 830 million budget for Dead Sea environmental protection and tourism on Sunday, green groups were not wholly satisfied with the decision.
"Only the comprehensive bill to restore the Dead Sea will provide a real solution to the worsening condition of the Dead Sea," said Amit Bracha, executive director of Adam Teva V'Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense).
"Without the approval and implementation of this bill, it will be impossible to rehabilitate the Dead Sea and safeguard it for future generations - not by means of the amount of money the government approved [on Sunday], which is intended primarily for tourism purposes," Bracha said.
Some NIS 830 million will be allocated toward developing tourism facilities at the Dead Sea, and repairing environmental damage caused in the area over the years, the cabinet decided on Sunday.
The funds earmarked for these purposes, as part of a proposal initiated by Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan, will be allocated over the next five years.
For its part, the Tourism Ministry will invest NIS 700 million in development schemes, of which NIS 434 million will be dispersed as grants to finance various initiatives, with the aim being the addition of 2,700 hotel rooms to the Dead Sea area.
The state will spend NIS 845 million over the next five years to rehabilitate the Dead Sea, the Tourism Ministry said on Monday.
According to the ministry, the sum was agree upon during a meeting of Finance, Tourism, Environmental Protection, and Energy and Water Ministry officials on Sunday night. NIS 725m. will come from the Tourism Ministry and the rest from the Environmental Ministry.
The plan will include renovations to tourist infrastructure at the Hamei Zohar and Ein Bokek areas, as well as a number of locations that have been damaged by rising water in the Dead Sea's southern basin in recent years (the largely disconnected northern basin is shrinking). The Tourism Ministry said that the work will also include rehabilitating the parks and nature areas that have been hurt by the changes in the level of the Dead Sea.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Thursday praised the agreement reached between the Treasury and Israel Chemicals on Dead Sea salt harvesting, saying he has no intention of taking any steps that would harm the business sector.
"As finance minister, my job is to increase the state's share in revenues from natural resources... while also ensuring that the entrepreneurs and investors receive their fair share of the profits," Steinitz said at an event marking the Association of Publicly Traded Companies' 20-year anniversary at Tel Aviv's Sheraton Hotel.
The Treasury-Israel Chemicals deal, which was approved by the government January 1, stipulates that ICL unit Dead Sea Works will contribute 80 percent of the total cost of a full salt harvest of the sea's southern portion.
The state's share of potash sales will rise from 5% to 10%, with the extra royalties to be designated to a Dead Sea rehabilitation fund.
Environmental and tourism proponents on Tuesday slammed the Dead Sea deal that the Finance Ministry made with Israel Chemicals last week.
The criticism came during a Knesset Finance Committee session being held on the issue a week and a half after the cabinet approved the deal, which stipulated that the company must pay for 80 percent of the southern basin's full salt harvest and increase royalty payments to the government from 5% to 10%. The salt must be harvested to prevent flooding that would endanger area hotels.
"The Dead Sea is not a bath full of minerals for the maximization of profits..." –Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan.
The cabinet rejected a bill for the second time that would provide for the comprehensive rehabilitation of the Dead Sea region, during a meeting on Monday.
"The Israeli government continues to stand by the side of the factories and to thwart any move that could save the Dead Sea and return it to its original owners – the public," said Adam Teva V'Din executive director, Amit Bracha, in a statement released by his office.
The bill, drafted by Adam Teva V'Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense) and put forward by MK Dov Henin (Hadash), advocated a comprehensive Dead Sea rehabilitation plan, to help curb sinking water levels in the northern basin, preserve area resources and revamp the management structure overseeing mineral extraction.
Could the ocean make pumped hydro power? In the Middle East, it could.
A brilliant proposal has been made to build a massive 2,400 MW sea water hydro project using the Mediterranean Sea, and the Dead Sea, which is below sea level. The Dead Sea Power Project would use the ocean to make hydro power, in a world first.
The ambition and scope of the project would be on a scale almost like terraforming Mars – and the environment is not much more hospitable.
Sea water has never been used in pumped hydro power, because sea water is all level at sea level, and hydro power requires higher reservoirs to work. Here's how this completely new way to make hydro power using an ocean would work.
Environmental advocacy group Adam Teva V'Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense) and the Movement for Quality Government submitted a petition to the High Court on Tuesday morning, calling for cancellation of the recent agreement between the government and Israel Chemicals regarding the upcoming Dead Sea salt harvest and company royalty charges.
The agreement, approved by the cabinet on Sunday, stipulated that Israel Chemicals branch Dead Sea Works would be responsible for 80 percent, or NIS 3.04 billion, of the salt harvest in the southern basin of the Dead Sea. Meanwhile, royalties paid to the state on the company's potash sales would rise from 5% to 10%, with the extra money being allocated to a Dead Sea rehabilitation fund.
The salt harvesting project in pool 5 in the southern Dead Sea will be one of the biggest engineering projects in Israel in the next few years. According to estimates by Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL), the project will include construction of infrastructure totaling approximately NIS 2.2 billion, and the cost of the project as a whole will be NIS 3.8 billion.
The project will be managed by a special company owned by Dead Sea Works. The company will employ directly about 300 employees, and according to senior managers at Israel Chemicals it will provide work indirectly to some 2,500 people: truck drivers, maintenance personnel, mechanics, engineers, architects, electricians, control personnel, and the list goes on.
The Finance Ministry has reached a deal with industrialists to rehabilitate the Dead Sea, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced in an interview with state-run Voice of Israel radio.
Steinitz signed the deal with Israel Corporation (Dead Sea Works) chairman Amir Elstein Tuesday night.
Under the proposal, mineral salt that is rising from beneath the surface of the lake's waters will be harvested and ground up for use in manufacturing.
The government will pay 10 percent of the cost of the salt harvesting in the lake's southern basin. Israel Corporation subsidiary Israel Chemicals Ltd. will pay the remaining 90 percent, totaling some NIS 3.04 billion.
Driving to the Dead Sea in summer is a dry, dry, dry experience...but, in the winter rainy season, look out for flash floods. Much needed water - but be very cautious - dry river beds fill up IN SECONDS. Let it rain, rain, rain!
The [Israeli] Knesset approved in a preliminary reading two bills proposed by MK Moshe Matalon (Israel Beiteinu) that would authorize a full salt harvest of the southern Dead Sea and charge 90 percent of the cost of the harvest to Dead Sea Works.
These extra royalties on the company would be sent directly to a special fund designated for Dead Sea rehabilitation. The bill passed with 45 MKs in favor and zero against, and it will move on to a first reading in the Economics Committee.
Calling the Dead Sea "dead" is a misnomer. The inland salt lake located at the lowest spot on earth, straddling Israel and Jordan, does contain life. It doesn't hold big fish, or attract seagulls looking for a drink, but a new study suggests that it plays host to a potentially rich number of microorganisms, some never before described by science.
A few days after the American photographer Spencer Tunick enlisted 1,000 volunteers to "strip" for the Dead Sea and be photographed, an Israeli and German research team announced some exciting findings from a summer research expedition: microorganisms that present themselves as photosynthetic microbial mats about 150 meters from shore, 30 meters down in the mineral-rich sea.
Situated in a most remarkable scenic spot overlooking both the Ein Gedi waterfalls AND the Dead Sea, Ein Gedi Field School is surrounded by some of the most breathtaking desert wilderness trails in the Middle East.
Ein Gedi National Park is known as a natural oasis, a well known recreational and hiking area with natural and historical sites going back to Biblical times and a major wildlife preserve.
In addition to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea, Ein Gedi Field School is the perfect home base to experience the wonders of the caves of Qumeran, Massada, and the history of survival, settlement and agriculture under extreme climatic conditions.
...two satellite images that show how the salty inland sea has changed over the past five years.
The orbital snapshot above was taken by the ASTER multispectral imager aboard NASA's Terra satellite in 2006. The picture below is a mosaic from Google Earth, based on orbital imagery provided this spring from DigitalGlobe, GeoEye and the French space agency CNES.
Bureaucratic delays that have dragged on for four years now are preventing the construction of an installation to pump contaminated water from the Rotem Plain area of the Negev. This means that pollution is spreading to groundwater and to Ein Bokek, one of the most important nature reserves in the region. This month the Israel Nature and Parks Authority reported that at the reserve a number of species of rare wild plants are disappearing, apparently because of the continuing pollution.
Chanting Frederic Chopin's classic death dirge "Marche Funebre," a group of black-clothed environmental activists trudged up the Knesset hill clutching a bright orange stretcher filled with mounds of sea salt on Monday morning.
The activists, members of the green group Friends of the Earth Middle East, were mourning the cabinet's 8-7 rejection the day before of a bill that would provide for the rehabilitation and protection of the Dead Sea.
Your guide to Israel's Dead Sea tourism – helping you plan a visit to the Dead Sea on your next Israel vacation.Book a hotel or boutique accommodation. Learn about vacation tips, local festivals and current events. Read about the history, ecology and health benefits that make the Dead Sea a unique natural wonder of the world.
