Water, water everywhere

By Goldie Wetcher, Israel Advocacy Committee member

You know the next line of this mournful refrain, “but not a drop to drink.” We can only imagine the impact on our lives without a plentiful supply of water. Yet, Israel does not take water for granted. When our Israeli family first visited us in the U.S., we asked them what they were most impressed with after touring our great country. Their answer shocked me, and I will never forget it. They said, “The most amazing thing is the way you waste your water.” After I visited them in their well-appointed home in Holon, Israel, my defensiveness turned into a realization of the truth of their observation as I observed their careful use of water.

My husband had already begun using the Israeli invention, drip irrigation hoses, for our garden due to its convenience even before that first visit to our Israeli family in the ’70s. We and our family have made many more trips to Israel since then and continue to learn about Israel’s innovations in water management.

I used to think, “What’s to worry about running out of water, we have it in abundance?” I was startled by a comment made by a Canadian friend years ago. “We have a great friend in Canada” I said, and he replied, “yes, till you start running out of water and want ours.”

Seth Siegel writes in his excellent book on Israel’s solutions to water management, “Let There Be Water, Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World,” that “there is a growing water shortage around the world and that “the U.S. government predicts that 40 of our 50 states and 60% of the earth’s land surface will soon face alarming gaps between available water and the growing demand for it.” I could picture African villages that lacked even a well to get their water but not our “civilized” world?

I wanted to learn how Israel could be “a model” as Siegel claims in his book, with its 60% of land made of desert, to “solve its water problems (with) an abundance of water to share with neighbors.”

Since I was a child collecting money for JNF on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, I have been devoted to the Jewish National Fund. Currently, I am on our local board and am a national board member for Alexander Muss High School in Israel, where three of my grandchildren, so far, have attended school. I knew of the successful water projects that JNF spearheaded in Israel. So, I turned to JNF to create a tour in Israel for my husband and me to learn how it was solving the water crisis.

On our tour, we observed that water management in Israel is a national effort and that every part of the economy has a role in developing its water industry. I recall a visit to a school where one of the proud students insisted that he, not the assigned teacher, wanted to explain to us how their system for water purification of “brown water” (water reclaimed from non-sewerage sources, such as showers and farming) was operated by the student management.

Among the many water projects we visited, I was so impressed with the creation of a beautiful recreation and housing area in Be’er Sheva. It utilized the current river sources, whose “banks were used as garbage dumps and junkyards, and there was a terrible stench in its vicinity from the sewage pools. A major restoration project has transformed the area into a green park with flowers and recreational activities for the benefit of the people of Be’er Sheva and its environs.”

JNF contends that this project and others are essential to give people opportunities to move away from congested urban areas, like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, into regions of the Negev and in the other direction towards the Sea of Galilee. Siegel writes that “Israel also makes a large effort to maximize the quantity of water that falls into the Sea of Galilee and its surrounding watershed” through “rain cloud seeding.” He says that the technique “may be adding as much as 10 billion gallons of water a year to the lake.”

To learn more about new developments, I turned to a family source, a young man who works at Elemental Excelarator in California. Jared told me he had the opportunity to review dozens of startups in the water sector on the merit of their technology and business models. He said, “I’ve certainly noticed the number of quality solutions bubbling up out of Israel and water certainly seems to be a core innovation focusing the Israeli business environment.” I looked at the five names he gave me and got interested in an Israeli company called Watergen, which extracts water from the atmosphere to produce drinking water.

I also checked with Zev Abraham, a resident of Naples and the Research Director for Capital Wealth Management. Abraham’s father defended Israel as a soldier in the IDF. Within a few minutes, Abraham created a full page of small, innovative Israeli companies who work in every sector, confirming the well-deserved title for Israel of “Startup Nation.”

Our conversation moved to concerns about the war waging in Ukraine and it took a few days before I could focus on writing up my notes due to my preoccupation with the war and the huge problems it represents. Our nightly news showcases man’s inhumanity to man and, at the same time, we see the kindness and courage it has engendered in others. So, I wrote up my notes to remind us all that we need lovingkindness. And kindness is easier to generate when our own needs are met, and we have enough water and energy for a better world.