Water Stories - Whom To Believe?

This:

AMMAN, Jordan, May 11 (UPI) -- The Jordan River, revered as the baptism site of Jesus, is now only a sluggish, sewage-choked stream whose waters are unfit to bathe in, environmentalists say.

..."The world's most holy river is under threat," the Zalul Environmental Association said in an open letter to the Pope. "Water from the once-proud Jordan River is being diverted for domestic and agricultural use, leaving the lower part of the river a shriveled stream with little to no fresh water and filled with sewage."

...The sewage comes from poorly managed septic systems in Palestinian West Bank cities and from waste water generated by Jordan and Syria.

This:

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel insisted on Tuesday that it shares water resources with Palestinians in a fair manner, rejecting World Bank claims that it draws more than its quota from the common aquifer.

The foreign ministry said that Palestinians have access to twice as much water as the 23.6 million cubic metres (833 million cubic feet) they are allocated annually under an agreement with Israel.

"Israel has fulfilled all its obligations regarding the supply of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity," it said in a statement.

"The Palestinians, on the other hand, have significantly violated their commitments under the water agreement," it said, adding that Palestinians had drilled 250 wells without authorisation and allowed raw sewage to flow into streams.

This:

..."Most transboundary streams in the region are contaminated and characterised by widespread pollution from Palestinian sources [typically raw sewage], as well as a variety of… sources from within Israel," said a working paper, entitled Monitoring Transboundary Palestinian-Israeli Streams, released in December by the Arava Institute and other Israeli and Palestinian organisations.

In some cases, downstream Palestinian towns receive Israeli waste. There are at least 10 transboundary streams in the region, with flows that go both ways. Untreated waste water from the West Bank can even end up flowing via Israel into the Gaza Strip and then the sea.

The pollution not only destroys the rivers and the connected eco-systems, but also seeps into the groundwater, harming drinking water sources. Furthermore, it leads to mosquito infestations, allowing diseases like West Nile Fever to spread.

"When people see a polluted river, they dump their garbage there, causing even more pollution and contamination," Ofer Shaulker, from the Besor Drainage Authority, which is responsible for the area, told IRIN, while standing on a pile of industrial waste on the riverbank.

After spending three years studying the contents of the Hebron and Alexander (Al-Khalil and Zomar, in Arabic) rivers, the researchers concluded that "the results confirm the necessity of cooperation in watershed management."

However, while there are some examples of Israeli and Palestinian joint efforts, for the most part, the security and political situation in the region has adversely affected true cooperation.

Experts on the issue, including people such as Gershon Baskin of the Israel/Palestinian Centre for Research and Information, and Nader al-Khatib of the Palestinian Water and Environmental Development Organisation, say the problem lies in the Israeli government's insistence that waste water treatment plants set up in the West Bank also serve the Israeli settlements there.

The Palestinians have refused to allow the treatment plants to be linked to the israeli settlements, as this would be seen as legitimising the existence of these settlements deemed illegal under international law.

This:

An important water source for both Israelis and Palestinians is in danger due to pollution from sewage, a new Israeli governmental report stated. About 2.8 million people, including Palestinians and Israeli settlers, live in the West Bank, but 'due to conflicts and economic problems, the effluents of more than two million people do not go through efficient pollution treatment', the report by the Israeli Ministry of Environment, the Civil Administration in the West Bank and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA), stated. 'The most important thing here is the damage to the water resources, which are the resources of both sides, the Israelis and Palestinians,' Omri Gal, a spokesman for INPA, told IRIN.

The sewage has penetrated the soil, polluting groundwater and springs. The authors warn that the mountain aquifer under the West Bank is highly sensitive to pollution and damage to the resource may be irreversible.

The report, based on extensive monitoring of streams, said 94 percent of Palestinian sewage in the West Bank went untreated or was partially treated and ended up in rivers and streams, while only slightly more than 1 percent was treated in the whole of the occupied Palestinian territories. About 30 percent of the Israeli sewage in the territory went untreated.

Had the effluent been purified, it could have been used in agriculture...

Up to 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank produce an estimated 56 million cubic metres of sewage per year, compared with 17.5 million by the 400,000 settlers – almost double the volume of sewage per head that Palestinians produce.

Human rights groups have warned about unfair water distribution in the West Bank, saying the existing policy favoured the settlers over the Palestinians.

The report was the second by the Israeli authorities on stream monitoring, but, said experts, was far more comprehensive than the one released last year.

The main problem was a lack of infrastructure for treating sewage in the West Bank, the report found.

Palestinians have long complained that the options presented to them by the Israelis for building treatment plants would tie Palestinian cities and villages to the settlements.

Gal, from the parks authority, said he hoped the report would lay the groundwork to clarify where the problems lay in the territory, so that they could be addressed.

'This will be a good tool for the donors to know exactly what the problem is,' he said.

This:

A cluster of strong thunderstorms that dropped more than 2 inches of rain on some West Bank communities has dissipated, prompting the National Weather Service to drop its flood advisory for the area.

There may still be some ponding of water in low-lying areas and on flood-prone roads, forecasters said, but significant street flooding is no longer expected.

A 40 percent chance of rainfall remains in effect this evening, dropping to 20 percent overnight and tomorrow.

That last one was tricky. The "West Bank" refers to the Mississippi River in Louisiana. ;->)