Dozens of Zalul's volunteers, fishermen and students demonstrated on Tuesday,

10-31-06, in front of the Carmel Hotel in Haifa where a discussion about the sewage of the Kishon factories took place.

In the discussion that was supposed to take place on 9-26-06 and was postponed as a result of Zalul's request from the Minister of Environment, Zalul presented its position regarding the pipeline bypassing the Kishon with consideration to the plan offered by the Ministry of Environment and the Kishon Council.

A month and a half ago, the deputy director of the Ministry of Environment conducted a public hearing of which the outcome was essentially decided in advance.  The public and environmental organizations were not given advanced notice about hearing.  The Ministry of Environment and the Kishon Council agreed that they found the perfect solution to the pollution problem n the Kishon River.  The solution is simply – build a pipeline that leads all the pollution into the sea! 

While the pipeline solution will undoubtedly improve the water quality of the Kishon River, it will also continue to devastate the condition of the sea in the Haifa area.  The problem with the pipeline is that the monitoring process will be much more complex and it will allow the factories to spill much more dangerous chemicals into the sea. The idea of moving pollution from one place to another also goes against all the environmental principals and completely contradicts the concept of sustainable development to which the Ministry of Environment pledged to adhere.

As a result of the public hearing, Yariv Abramovich requested from the Minister to postpone the official hearing on the subject in order to allow the environmental groups to research the topic and prepare appropriately.  The Minister agreed and postponed the meeting until 31-10-06.

At the hearing, Zalul gave its professional opinion regarding the pipeline plan as mentioned above.  By the end of the hearing it was clear that there is a large disagreement on this subject, in particular within the Ministry of Environment.  The subject will, therefore, be examined more closely, alternatives will be suggested and another hearing will take place in the near future.