Israeli water expert offers to h p with algae problem

MONTREAL — Israeli water expert Elion Adar admits he feels a little like a mouse standing before a mammoth when he presumes to offer help to Canada in the management of its seemingly limitless supply of the wet stuff.

After all, Israel has but one freshwater body – Lake Kinneret – while Canada has 20 per cent of the world’s total freshwater.

Nevertheless, Adar believes Canada can benefit from what Israel has learned from necessity over many years: how to keep the water it has pristine, and squeeze every drop, so to speak, out of it.

“Israel is the first country in the world to recognize that water is a scarce commodity, like oil,” he said. Canada may have an immense quantity of water, but its quality is deteriorating quickly, he warned.

Adar, director of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, came to Montreal to meet with Line Beauchamp, Quebec minister of sustainable development, the environment and parks. He thinks he and his fellow scientists at BGU may be able to contribute to the reduction of blue-green algae that is contaminating some 70 of the province’s lakes.

Last year, Quebec launched a 10-year, $200-million action plan to clean up the toxic growth.

He also hopes to foster academic exchanges with water experts at McGill University, the Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec, both in Montreal and Trois-Rivières.

Adar, and the Canadian Associates of BGU, which hosted his recent Montreal visit, want to develop with Quebec a similar relationship that now exists between Israel and Manitoba.

Adar had just come from the first-ever Manitoba-Israel water symposium, hosted by the province’s water stewardship minister Christine Melnick, in co-operation with the Jewish National Fund. Adar was one of 12 Israeli water experts who met in Winnipeg with an equal number of their Manitoba counterparts for three days to share their knowledge on issues of common concern.

Adar is a world renowned scholar in the field of water management, specifically, in assessing how ground water flows into lakes and rivers. He is the developer of the Mixing Cell Model, that has revitalized waterways in Israel, as well as countries as diverse as Namibia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

Blue-green algae thrive on the overabundance of phosphates and nitrates, mainly from fertilizers and detergents, running off into bodies of water.  Only if scientists have a better understanding of how these and other pollutants move above and below ground, can a means be found to stop their spread into lakes and rivers, he said.

But, he added, the cause of this algae is likely not only man-made. The natural decomposition of plants and minerals may also be contributing factors.

If scientists have a better understanding of how these and other pollutants move above and below the ground, they could stop their spread into lakes and rivers, he said.

The Manitoba symposium was the first time top scientists from any country were invited by the province to discuss water, which Adar takes as a huge compliment, given the fact that Lake Winnipeg is bigger than all of Israel.

Blue-green algae is a problem in Manitoba, too, and one of the issues examined was innovative techniques to remove the nutrients that feed these bacteria-laden growths from waste-water.

The Manitoba government has also launched a water stewardship scholarship program, in partnership with JNF, to encourage graduate-level students from the province to pursue water-related studies at post-secondary institutions in Israel. The program allows one student per year over the next 10 years to study in Israel.

Manitoba has also allocated $300,000  for scientific collaboration between the University of Manitoba and BGU on water management.

A thunderstorm was raging while Adar addressed a small gathering at the home of Associates’ Montreal chair Gerry Feifer and his wife Sherry. Adar was envious; Israel has had four consecutive dry years which is straining its ability to supply water to Israelis and, to a certain extent, its Jordanian and Palestinian neighbours.

The Kinneret, the national water reservoir, provides less than a quarter of water needs, is healthy today and the water is safe to drink out of any tap in the country, he said, because it has been watched carefully for 45 years. But it supplies less than a quarter of Israel’s water needs.

Israel is now desalinating 156 million cubic meters of water annually, Adar said, and that requires 4KW of electricity for every cubic meter.

Since the national water distribution system was put in place in 1964, the population has more than doubled and agricultural output is 3.5 times higher, yet the amount of water consumed is about the same, he said.