Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov called on Monday the Finance Ministry to acquire the NIS 5 to 7 billion required for the salt harvest directly from the privatized Dead Sea Works company.
Dredging all of the 20 m. tons of salt that accumulate in the southern portion of the Dead Sea annually for the next 20 years will require about NIS 6.5 b., according to a study released last week commissioned by the tourism ministry’s Dead Sea Preservation Government Company.
“Dead Sea Works makes enormous profits on its intensive exploitation of the Dead Sea and the public gets only small crumbs,” said MK Dov Khenin (Hadash), chairman of the Knesset’s Health and Environment Committee, in a statement on Monday evening. “The imposition of the costs of the treatment of the environmental effects of the plant operations must fall entirely on the plants themselves by virtue of the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”
Environmental activists and researchers unanimously applauded the decision to promote the harvesting of Dead Sea salt. “No less important than the decision to pick the environmentally correct alternative is the apparent determination of the minister to see that the ‘polluter pays’ for this new expensive infrastructure and not the Israeli tax payer”, told journalists, Prof. Alon Tal, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. Tal chaired the committee that drafted the Dead Sea Preservation Government Company’s report, and had originally recommended the salt harvest.
Amit Bracha, executive director of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam, Teva V’din) also welcomed the decision to adopt this route, and meanwhile urged the finance minister and the government to adopt the ideas set forth by the tourism and environmental protection ministers as soon as possible.
But before establishing a fund to further develop the area’s tourist attractions, Bracha stressed that it is necessary to first use allocated money toward the environmental rehabilitation, as a result of damages caused by the industrial operations of the Dead Sea Works plants. He also asked that the government immediately check that the plants have paid fully for the use of this public natural resource.
Friends of the Earth – Middle East also praised the announcement, reminding the Dead Sea Works company that it must bear the brunt of the fiscal responsibility regarding the improvements. The organization’s director, Gideon Bromberg, in a statement said: “This is the correct and fair solution, the only viable option that is also in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Now, the Dead Sea Works must recognize their responsibility for the environmental damages and bear the financial cost of repairing them”.
