Industrial plants and other facilities – such as quarries, waste dump sites and water purification plans – will be required to report annually on the amount of pollution they emit and the amount of waste they transport elsewhere or treat on site, under a new bill that comes up for discussion next week in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.

The bill would create a pollution emission registry that would gather information from about 300 facilities in the country and make it public. If it is eventually approved by the Knesset, Israel would follow the lead of other developed countries that already have such registries in place.

A demonstration in the Ramat Hovav industrial zone (the Negev) against pollution (photo: Al Ittihad)

The primary targets of the legislation are refineries, fertilizer factories and other chemical plants. Facilities covered by the law would have to provide information about a wide range of potential pollutants that may have been released into the environment, including some of the most dangerous, such as chlorine, cyanide and arsenic, as well as carcinogens such as formaldehyde and benzene. In recent years, Environmental Protection Ministry surveys have revealed the presence of such substances in the air, but without always being able to trace the source of the pollution.

The bill has been proposed by a group of Knesset members headed by Dov Khenin (Hadash – Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) in cooperation with the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam, Teva V’Din in Hebrew). The legislation is similar to existing laws in 39 other countries.