[00:00:00] Bridget Scanlon: Welcome to the Water Resources Podcast. I am Bridget Scanlon. In this podcast, we discuss water challenges with leading experts, including topics on extreme climate events, over exploitation, and potential solutions towards more sustainable management.
Today, I would like to welcome Noam Weisbrod to the Water Resources Podcast. Noam is Dean of the Desert Research Institute at Ben Gurion University in The Negev. And his research focuses on contaminant hydrology, but today we're going to talk about general water resource issues in Israel. Thank you so much, Noam, for joining us on the podcast.
[00:00:45] Noam Weisbrod: Thank you, Bridget. It's really great to be here.
[00:00:47] Bridget Scanlon: And Noam and I have known each other for over a couple of decades through a mutual friend, Ronit Nativ, who was Noam's supervisor, and who was a postdoc when I first came to Texas. Ronit was an incredible person and a great teacher and colleague, and we miss her dearly.
[00:01:07] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Ronit was an amazing person. Unfortunately, she's not with us for more than 10 years. And I guess that the reason that I am a hydrology professor is mostly because of her, because that wasn't my plan, but she kind of pushed me and you could not say no to Ronit. if you remember, I mean, it wasn't an option. Anyway, I miss her a lot and think about her a lot when I have my students now and leading my institutes and my departments. Yeah, we definitely miss Ronit a lot. Yeah.
[00:01:38] Bridget Scanlon: You see the incredible research here in Texas for the radioactive waste disposal sites and characterizing the water resources in the Ogallala Aquifer. And I think she was tough. But, she provided everything to optimize, so you had no excuses not to perform well with Ronit.
Okay. So thank you so much, Noam. Maybe first you can describe a little bit about your institute and the Desert Research Institute and the size and what you cover and things like that and where it's located. That would be great.
[00:02:10] Noam Weisbrod: I'll try to do it very shortly because it will be a separate podcast, I assume. Anyway, the Jacob Blanchard Institute for Desert Research Institute is located in the Sede Boqer campus of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The main campus of the university is located in the city of Beer Sheva and we are located about an hour drive south. From the city of Beer Sheva, really in the heart of the Ramat Negev region, the campus has three institutes under the umbrella of the Desert Research Institutes.
One is the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, where I'm coming from, that is dealing with different aspects of water technologies, water research, water engineering. and so on and so forth. The second institute is dealing with biotechnology and agriculture of dry land. And the third institute is dealing with renewable energy, which here is mostly solar energy and ecosystem dynamics, which is mostly ecology department.
So this is overall the structure and we have here an international graduate school with students this year coming from more than 30 countries, roughly 300 students, masters and PhDs. And if everything goes well in two years, we'll also have a bachelor degree. Everything is in English, everything is international.
So it is a very special place in Israel.
[00:03:25] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, it's amazing. And it seems like your institute reflects the strengths and the advances that Israel has made in both water resources and agricultural production, irrigated agriculture, and all of these fields. So it's great that you can train so many people from different countries then to go back and apply many of the techniques that you have developed.
So today we want to talk about water resource aspects and most of your potable water these days comes from seawater desalination, but that wasn't always the case. Maybe you can describe a little bit about the evolution of the seawater desal program in Israel.
[00:04:06] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. So that's pretty interesting because, now when we get almost 80% of our potable water from desalination, it is really difficult to imagine that in 2004, if you wanted to drink seawater in Israel, you had to be a fish.
And since then, things changed dramatically. And we used to get about 60 to 70% of our water from groundwater, from the different aquifers. And about roughly 30% or a little bit more of the, from the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake in the northern part of Israel. It's actually the only freshwater lake in the Middle East.
I don't know if you knew it, but maybe you did. But this was a major source for water in Israel. Right now it is being used, maybe 3 - 5% max, we're still using it just to get the system working, but it's not really a source. It is a major source to deliver water to Jordan. this is our source that we deliver water to Jordan and Jordan, our neighbor is really suffering from lack of water, big time, and luckily we can provide them with water because of our desalination systems. And this is really great thing, I believe.
[00:05:25] Bridget Scanlon: So, so what's happened in 2004 to, I mean, Israel was the leader in the technical aspects of seawater desal, right? with reverse osmosis and people from Israel developing that technology. I think that was a huge advance.
[00:05:40] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, by the way, if you mentioned it, Sidney Loeb, that was actually considered to be the person who invented the reverse osmosis for seawater desalination, was a faculty member here.
Originally, he was in UCLA, but he was Jewish and he immigrated to Israel and got a position at the Ben Gurion University. And next time you will see that we have some memories for things that to show his really amazing work, but I think that, like many other things in water, the scientists are not the decision makers.
And I think that Israel was really a leader in a lot of things that are related to water for many years, like drip irrigation is an Israeli invention and we definitely, we were leaders in a reverse osmosisdesalination and a lot of other things, wastewater treatment and things like that.
But I think that nothing special happened in 2004. It was a process that took a while for the decision makers, the politician realized that you cannot rely anymore on our natural resources. We're going to lose this fight. There is a natural population growth in Israel. And, there are more and more people.
Our water resources became a big problem. The water level in the Sea of Galilee is really unstable. And there is a red line that you're not allowed to pump below the red line because you can create kind of irreversible salination, and algae bloom and things like that. And it happened more and more that you couldn't pump more from the Sea of Galilee.
The coastal aquifer was a big problem as well because it's very agricultural and you see more and more wells that are getting either saline or with high concentration of nitrate. So a lot of the areas you couldn't use for groundwater production, the mountain aquifer. It's a confined, fractured media, so it's storativity is pretty low and it's changed a lot according to droughts and things like that. So it was really unstable and was a big problem. And this is, eventually people like the decision makers realize that we need to do something different. And then we started to deal with desalination from 2004. And since then, if you look at the graph, it really became more and more dominant rapidly.
And actually right now we are constructing two additional desalination plants, one in the north and one in Birkat Miriam area, which is near one that is already exist. And it, for the first time, is going to start to deliver desalinated water to the sea of Galilee. So the national water carrier, instead of going north to the south, go to go toward the Sea of Galilee, it's like reverse national water carrier. Actually, everything is ready. I mean, the pipes, the pumps, everything is ready to just wait for the desalination factory to start to operate, which is going to be probably in a year or something like that. And this is really revolution in terms of water in Israel, because we were always thinking about water going from the North to the South.And suddenly this is really weird. Yeah.
[00:09:01] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. So. Because you're, the southern part of Israel is semi arid and water resources is a critical issue. So you were depleting the groundwater resources and large declines in the Coastal aquifer and then you're getting some seawater intrusion related to that and then the Mountain aquifer, because of the low storage coefficient was not really reliable. So you had to buffer then. I mean, when we think of water resources in terms of supply and demand, we can reduce demand, we can increase supply, and we can transport water. So the National Water Carrier that you developed from the 60s, you mentioned, allowed you to transport water from the northern part of the Israel, which is more humid to the southern part, which is pure desert. And so that allows, and that, that was a huge investment. We've seen similar things in California, the Central Valley Project or the State Water Project, transporting water from the humid region in the north to the arid region in the south. So maybe you can describe a little bit about the National Water Carrier, because normally when we think about water, it's so expensive to transport it.
It's so heavy, but when we think about water, we can store water, but it's difficult to transport it. The opposite seems to be true of electricity. We have all this grid system. We can transport electricity, but we can't readily store it. So it's nice that you have this national water carrier then to allow you to transport water throughout Israel. And maybe you can describe that a little bit. And I know.
[00:10:38] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. Okay. So first of all, as you mentioned, that was a huge project. It was the largest construction project in Israel for many years in the sixties of the previous century. And this was the vision of David Ben Gurion. Our first prime minister was really an amazing guy.
[00:10:55] Noam Weisbrod: I mean, his vision was,it's like a Jules Verne kind of, and he realized that if we cannot transfer the water from the North to the South, Israel cannot exist as a state, as an independent state. And that was really weird at the time, but he insisted and it just happened. And it's kind of a spider that goes from the sea of Galilee everywhere.
There is a major pipe and small pipes and smaller and smaller and smaller. And all the resources are connected to this pipe, including of course, all the desalination factories. So actually when I'm taking a shower. And I live in the heart of the Israel naked desert, I have no clue where the water is coming from, because there is a big supercomputer that make the optimization according to the price of each source.
So if you need to operate a pump to pump water and during the day, the price of the electricity is higher, so it will take the source from somewhere else. So it make optimization and the exact ratio between how much water is coming from each factory, desalination factory, and from each well, and from the Sea of Galilee, and here and there.
It's just a, actually an algorithm. And this is really amazing. I mean, I don't know how many people are really understanding how small Israel is. It's an extremely small country. And for many years, our national water carrier was the second largest water carrier in the world, in the country that is one of the smallest in the world.
So I think that speaks for itself in terms of the magnitude of this project for the state of Israel. And Ben Gurion was right. I mean, this was really a game changer. It was a big game changer.
[00:12:45] Bridget Scanlon: It's just amazing. So the pipe system then, it's up to 20 inches in diameter for the central pipelines. And most of it, some of it is open canals, but most of it is pipe. Is it in the ground or is it at the surface? And how long is the largest extent from north to south? It's not
[00:13:06] Noam Weisbrod: It is not 20 inches, it's 100 inch. The
[00:13:08] Bridget Scanlon: the main pipe, 100 inch, right, right.
[00:13:10] Noam Weisbrod: Yes. The main pipe, of course, there're smaller pipes. I'm not sure how long.
I mean, when you start from the Sea of Galilee, you have to cross a big river. A huge river like a. Think about that. Well, it's not the Grand Canyon, but it's like a small Grand Canyon. so this is a huge siphon and by itself, it's a very complicated to make it especially 70 years ago from the engineering point of view.
And then you go to a big, two actually, or now it's three reservoirs for cleaning. At the end of this reservoir, there are huge sand filters. And the water goes through the sand filters t, reduce potential turbidity and things like that. And then it all the way from there, it's, pipes below the surface, it's all under the surface and nothing is, up and it goes, hundreds of kilometers.
[00:14:06] Bridget Scanlon: And what's the energy source to drive that water through the carrier? Yeah, so I guess it's been changing over time. Yeah, it's been changing over time.
[00:14:16] Noam Weisbrod: It's basically electricity and the source of electricity of the in Israel was coal and now it's mostly gas since we found a lot of gas in the Mediterranean.
Still, there are a couple of stations that are on call, but everything. To gas, it's not an easy process, so it's mostly gas produce the electricity. There are pumps and boosters, push it generally in the the negative, there are a lot of solar fields as well, which is part of the energy that we have in Israel in general, but, that's a different story.
[00:14:49] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. So having this grid system, so you operate it almost like electricity, then you optimize relative to pricing and all of that sort of thing, and it's just like a grid system for electricity, it seems like. And having that system then, that centralized system, makes it easy for seawater desal plants to put the water into that system and then transport it around. So the cost of delivering the desal is reduced. And so whatever price the desal plants have for desalinating the seawater is almost the same as the price that the customer gets for that water.
[00:15:26] Noam Weisbrod: Exactly. As you probably know, in many places, the, when people said that the cost of the desalination is really high. It includes cost to transfer the water from the seashore to the customer, and that if the customer is 100 miles away, that's a lot of money because it's a lot of energy. And since the National Water Carrier goes along the seashore just a few miles away from the coast, basically, You just need to push the water from the gate of the factory to the national water carrier.
And that's really nothing. And then anyway, you're in the main system. So this is why our desalinated water, which on average is about 0. 5. I don't know how to translate it to American units that's, I can't remember that anymore. It's been a few years since I took classes in the US, but it's cheap. I mean, it's much cheaper than most other places.
Another reason that it's so cheap is the way that we operate the desalination factories. The country is buying the water from the factory 25 years in advance. So if they are. Publishing a bid for 100 million cubic meter per year, a desalination factory. Israel promised to buy the water for many years ahead.
So the company that is submitting a proposal knows exactly how much money they're going to get.
[00:17:00] Bridget Scanlon: And that's huge, because I've seen, in Australia when they develop desal plants, like in Sydney, and then, the millennium drought ends in 2011 and they just finished building the desalination plant.
And then there's no demand. There's very little demand then for that water. But the fact that Israel, the government, guarantees the price, I guess it's like take or pay contract. So that's huge for these companies to develop these large desalination plants, because they have a guaranteed price for 20 years.
That's amazing. And that, I think that is essentially, if we want security, if we want water security, we have to pay for it. We can't rely on markets.
[00:17:44] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, it's, first of all, I owe, I was also visiting this desalination factory in Sydney, which looks very nice and very clean and it hardly operated ever because they are operating it only if the water level in the reservoirs are below 60%, I think if I remember correctly, and then, and in the last few years, it's hardly happened.
And when it happened, it's too late, but that's a different story. We're not talking about Australia here. yes, I mean, and. It's more than that, because what happened is that if we have extra water, we can use it for manage aquifer recharge so we can actually, because we over utilize our aquifers for many years, so we can kind of like pay back to the bank that we took too much money from, and we are using desalinated water to recharge the coastal aquifer. Right, right. Yeah. Also an interesting concept, and as we also did some research about it because it's very interesting because there is not a lot of experience what happens if you recharge desalinated water without any salt into the sediments. So it's an interesting scientifically, very interesting question by itself, but again, that's a different story. Right.
[00:19:01] Bridget Scanlon: So, I mean, that's a huge subsurface reservoir then created by depleting the aquifer. So when people talk about sustainable management of water resources, I think we can see that, maybe we have depleted many aquifers in the past and now maybe we have this subsurface reservoir that we can push excess surface water, desalinated seawater, other things back into them through this managed aquifer recharge.
So do you use mostly spreading basins to recharge the aquifer so it has that water has time to equilibrate with the soil before it Moves into the aquifer or do you use wells in the, like in aquifer storage and recovery type system to get the water back into the coastal aquifer? What's the main approach that's used in Israel?
[00:19:50] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. So we are using the, one of the problems in Israel is that, as I mentioned, it's a highly populated country, very small country, and it's very difficult to find large areas for many systems, like let's call it the classical managed aquifer recharge through basins, slowly percolate into the through the vadose zone and all that.
And so we do have it, but not enough. So we do use some wells. as well, like injection wells. But I think there is a lot of thinking and a lot of efforts to increase recharge, for example, from abundant small mines that, that, that used to, excavate, limestone and...
[00:20:32] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Quarries and stuff that you were using...
[00:20:34] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, different types of, sand quarries and things like that. it's very sensitive. Like you have to make sure that you're not making any damage to the environment. And there are a lot of issues that you're very well aware of. But this is the direction. And also, conceptually, until a few years ago, people always thought that using desal, very expensive desalinated water for recharge makes no sense.
So it's also kind of a mindset to think, okay, I mean, water is a commodity and it's expensive and it's a limited commodity. And yes, we, that in many countries, people are still not paying for water. They say, what's the difference between air and water? Why we're not paying for air and we should pay for water.
So this of course, not, I mean, it's mostly in developing countries, but the concept of using expensive desalinated water for recharge is still something that people are digesting.
[00:21:29] Bridget Scanlon: Well, I think, yeah, I think normally people think of, urban areas, large cities and stuff, having desalinated water as a part of a portfolio of options then to make them more resilient to droughts and floods and things like that. But I mean, having it as a main supply is unusual. But I mean, the way you have managed that, the government securing the price and all that has allowed the industry then to develop. And so I recall initially maybe, there weren't options to manage it all or to use all of it. And so some of it was used for irrigated agriculture. It seems like early on, or maybe I miss, don't remember that correctly, but so. You're not going to, you're going to use it for something and it takes a while to develop the supply and demand aspects. Maybe you can describe a little bit, Noam, the desalination process, like the pre-treatment, the RO, and the post treatment aspects.
[00:22:24] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. So, yeah,I'm guessing that you don't want to make it really like course about desalination, but as you mentioned accurately, there isn't first an intake from the ocean or from the Mediterranean Sea in our case, it's not the open ocean, then it goes through the pretreatment, which is mostly granular filtration or micron filtration or both. Mostly to remove large particles that can block the membranes or create this kind of thing. And then the major process, the membrane desalination, the reverse osmosis is, it's very impressive for those of you who've never been in desalination factories. Very impressive. You press the water through the membranes. Typically for seawater, you need 60 to 70 bars, I think, more or less. That's the pressure that you need. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of energy. That's the thing about this process, of course, that if you desalinate, let's say, brackish water from deep, groundwater, you need maybe 10 bars or something like that. The pressure depends on the concentration, but much less pressure, much less energy. And then the water that you're getting from the reverse osmosis is pure water, just H2O, just the water molecules. And this is very unhealthy. We cannot drink it. We cannot irrigate with it. This is strictly impossible. So we are going through the post treatment.
And the post treatment is again, kind of a filter with limestone and the interaction between the pure water and the limestone enrich the desalinated water with minerals. And once it is enriched with minerals, you can inject it into the line. So reverse osmosis is the main process, but it's not the only process.
And there is a lot of room for improvement and research on all the stages, not only on the membranes. Of course, that the membranes, it's a very active area of research in our institutes. I think there are six professors that this is what they're doing, how to create more resistance membrane for biofouling, biofouling scaling, anti virus, anti this, anti that.And this is very important part of what we do here in terms of research.
[00:24:40] Bridget Scanlon: So, so you mentioned an important aspect of desalination. So with seawater, it's about 35 grams per liter of total dissolved solids that you're desalinating. And the nice thing about seawater, it's a uniform composition. So you know what you're dealing with all of the time.Often with brackish water in the U. S. they want to take produced water from oil and gas and desalinate it. But that could be, four or five times the salinity of seawater and then it could vary over time. But you mentioned, typically brackish water might be about 20% of the salinity of seawater.
And then with the lower salinity, then you require less energy, less pressure and less energy. So these are all important factors to consider because sometimes I think, they're desalinating brackish water near the coast, and then I think maybe they will induce seawater intrusion where they're using brackish water rather than seawater, which is right next to them, but maybe it's the cost and the energy aspects.
But so some people talk about how do you manage the concentrate then? So when you desalinate seawater, the plants are normally, I don't know what efficiency they are, they're 50% efficient or, and so then what do you do with the concentrate and how concentrated is it? Is it like twice seawater, maybe 70 grams per liter total dissolved solids and that goes back into the ocean. So maybe you can describe that a little bit,
[00:26:08] Noam Weisbrod:. Well, actually it's not accurate because what most of the desalination factories in Israel are doing, they are diluting the brine, the concentrate with water, with cooling water, seawater. So what goes actually eventually back to the ocean is only about 5 to 10% more saline than the seawater.
So it's up to 45 grams per liter instead of 30 mg/L something. So this is what they do apparently. So they're, because you have to use a lot of water for cooling and for cooling, you also use seawater. So you just mix the concentrate with the cooling water and discharge it back to the ocean. I call it, I mean, to the Mediterranean Sea. So, it's not as extreme as if you discharge the brackish, the concentrate as is. so this is the method that they are using to minimize the impact or the potential impact on the aquatic environment. And,
[00:27:14] Bridget Scanlon: so the discharge pipes, then there are porous pipes that extend far out into the sea. and you want to separate those from the inlet pipes. Is that correct? Or, so that you won't be just pulling in that. But since the salinity is not that different, maybe that's not a big issue.
[00:27:32] Noam Weisbrod: Well, I think that there are now three of the five, if I'm not mistaken, you're thinking in Sore and maybe in Ashdod. If I'm not mistaken, they have what they call diffuser systems. So the water that is discharged back to the Mediterranean Sea is not discharging directly. There is a long pipe of a few miles that distributes the water around, so the area of impact is much larger, but then the actual impact is much smaller because it's separate, it's distributed on a much larger area.
Wow. So this is the way they are doing it. Right.
[00:28:14] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. And I know energy is not your bag, it's not your main research area, but so over time then when Israel was developing their natural gas offshore, then I presume they've built natural gas combined cycle plants. And so then that now has replaced some of the coal plants. And so most of the energy source then is natural gas for these desalination plants.
[00:28:40] Noam Weisbrod: Definitely. Again, I'm not signing on the numbers, but as far as I remember, it's about 12% of the overall energy consumption of Israel is desalination,
[00:28:52] Bridget Scanlon: Then you mentioned Jordan, and how you work together with Jordan.
So I, I understood that Jordan is developing maybe more solar, solar plants to provide energy to Israel, and then in Israel would provide desalination water back to Jordan. Is that a new program that's developing?
[00:29:11] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, that's a new program that was recently signed. I don't think that solar panels are already functioning and, but this is one of the major reasons that we created this pipeline that take water from the desalination factory toward the Sea of Galilee, because the Sea of Galilee is a great reservoir.
To provide water to Jordan, it's just near the border between Israel and Jordan and, yeah, the agreement is that they will get water and they will build, big solar fields, like huge solar fields. I think it is being the funding is through one of the Gulf countries that helped to build it. I'm not sure because I don't think that Jordan has the financial resources. Resources, yeah, that are needed and then, yeah, they will pay for the water with energy. So this is a win because Israel again is very limited with surface area and Jordan is a much larger country and there is almost unlimited surface area for solar fields and we need a lot of energy in the northern part of the country because most of the solar is in the south.
In the Negev, where I live, this is where most of the solar fields are. So, it's a win situation. I think that this is a great example for water making peace and not war. everybody is saying that, the next war will be over water, but I think that the peace will be over water and not the... We work together and we need to find ways to make it a win situation.
That's very important. We're living, the Middle East is a very rough neighborhood. And in this neighborhood, it's all dry countries. All the countries suffer from lack of water. It's a major problem and we need to solve it. And I think that if we will improve the situation, it's going to be great.
[00:31:01] Bridget Scanlon: It’s one of the things. Well, I think the Middle East accounts for some of the papers I was reading accounts for about half of the global desalination. So seawater desal is a big part of the water balance in these dry countries.
And the other aspect of water that is very advanced in Israel is wastewater recycling, reuse and recycling. So maybe you can describe that a little bit, Noam. you guys have been doing that for a long time and how it is advancing and how that What that water is used for.
[00:31:34] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, that's a good point Indeed, wastewater is treated. Wastewater is a major source of the water being used for irrigation in Israel, actually, about 60% of the overall water being used for irrigation is from treated wastewater.
And we are treating and reusing almost 90% from our domestic wastewater, which is way more than any other country. I think that Spain is about 20% or something like that. And then all other countries, much less than that. And again, one of the advantages of Israel in this regard is the fact that we are very small.
So it's a small country and you don't need to deliver the treated wastewater a hundred of miles from the agricultural to the agricultural areas. It's not that far away from the cities. Most of the treatment is to a level of tertiary treatment. And the largest wastewater treatment factory is the Shafdan, which is actually the last stage of the treatment is actually managed aquifer recharge.
Because what we do is we take the treated wastewater after the activated sludge and we spread it in basins. We let it infiltrate through about 30 meters of unsaturated zone. Then we have ring of production wells. We pump the water. And we deliver it to irrigation. And in this factory, we treat about 140 million cubic meters per year. It's a big factory. And it's interesting because the recharge is a cyclic process. So you flooded for about 48 hours and then you dried for about 48 hours and then you flood it again. I mean, so the overall accumulation, the hydraulic head of on each basin is more than 100 meter per year.
Just if if you put it, this is a lot of water and also it's a very active way of recharge. We are trying to optimize it. We're trying to find ways to at one point, get the maximum infiltration into these basins, but also keep a maximum level of purification. So there are a lot of tricks there.
We're trying to inject air into the subsurface. We're trying to play with the cycles where we're trying to do different type of cultivation to the soil, to see what happened to, to break, to get more oxygen into the subsurface and other things as well, but saying that I have to say that there are tons of wastewater.
Treatment plants start from, small farms here in the Negev that we, here in my institutes,we build tailor made wastewater treatment systems for farms of one family that are off grid. Sometimes it's with a wetland system, recycled wetlands that, pump the water again and flood the wetland.
And sometimes it's different type of aerobic/anaerobic digestors and so on and so forth. So we really try to find solution to wastewater to all scales so we can use the wastewater. There are still some places that the wastewater is going only. And through secondary treatment, but in most places it's already tertiary treatment, either the SAT (soil aquifer treatment), which is the largest recharge or membranes.
So this was again, a big changer for Israel because most of the water, as and I think everybody that is listening to this podcast know 75 to 80% of the water is actually for food production. Roughly. I mean, every state is a different story, every country, but if we say globally, 70, 80% is for food production.
So if we can save water on agriculture, this is huge. I mean, it's not, this is the main reason that we are using water, the major needs. So, yeah. Now, of course, that in Israel you see always black pipes and purple pipes because the wastewater, it's a different system. It's all in purple pipes.
So if you see a purple pipe, it means that, there is wastewater inside. We're not allowed to drink wastewater, even if the quality is great. So we don't have the Orange County.
[00:35:43] Bridget Scanlon: Direct quotable reuse.
[00:35:45] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. Yeah. So this is the ministry of health is not, doesn't want to take the responsibility. Let's put it this way, but for, it's definitely great water for unlimited irrigation, and we can export the produce to Europe, to, to the United States, because it's really high quality water.
[00:36:01] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. It's just amazing how you combine everything and close the loops, so reusing, treating and reusing the wastewater is a really nice example. I think of the circular economy and closing the loop. And I was just talking with Bill Alley recently from the National Groundwater Association.
And so in San Diego, where he was living, they had to update their treatment plant to meet Environmental Protection Agency regulations. But so they felt like it was best, to use that water then and instead of just upgrading the treatment plant, they are going to develop an advanced treatment system so they can reuse the wastewater.
So these are really important things. And then of course that gets to, what you just mentioned about, we use most of our water in food production. I mean, it cracks me up sometimes when I hear people say, do you turn the faucet off when you're brushing your teeth or, things like that?
Or, they think that the only water used. what you drink, or what you shower with, or whatever. And, but I mean, most of our food is based on what we eat, and then it, that gets into the water footprint. But it's not just the water footprint, it's what are the conditions where that food is grown, and is there enough water to support that food production or not?
And so Israel, again, is the leader there with their drip irrigation systems and efficient irrigation systems to minimize, to try to minimize that water use for food production. Maybe you can describe that a little bit, Noam. And then if you have a very efficient system, it's difficult for me to imagine, if it's extremely efficient, like we have in the, over the Ogallala aquifer or in some places, then you can build up salt. And so how do you manage the salt and the soil? Do you flush it occasionally? Or how do you manage that aspect?
[00:37:54] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, so, so first of all, as you mentioned in Israel, more crop land unit and more crop per drop. These are two key sentences that we are really trying hard to remember.
And actually, we don't have any other option because water is a very limited and expensive commodity, and we have to treat it very carefully. And land is even worse because it's a small country. So this is why Israel is really, as you mentioned, a leader in terms of agri related technologies to increase the efficiencies.
This can be fertigation, and this can be irrigation, and this can be a lot of things. I think that actually I've seen the Israeli companies all over the world because I'm traveling a lot for work and I see them often. So it's not Israel only anymore. I mean, they're working really all over the world, obviously in Israel.
I mean, it's so obvious that I feel, I'm not even saying it, but I mean, you won't see here any a flood irrigation or something that is very, common in, in large parts of the United States. We won't talk about the United States and why people are still irrigating that way. That's a different podcast, I guess, but obviously it's not only science.
It's based on other limitations and the reasons why the decision makers are making their decisions. Obviously here, everything, and I mean, really the sophistication. I mean, when people think about drip irrigation, okay, so you have a pipe with holes. No, it's much more, it's much smarter than that.There are more than 1, 000 patents. registered patents on drip irrigation only. So it's very complicated. And there are a lot of smart, there are now drippers that are open and close according to the tension in the soil. And they are, it's different for different soils and different crops and this and that the subsurface drip irrigation, of course, is very common now, low pressure drip irrigation and more and more.
It's true that in places where there is a lot of evaporation, which is you know, all dry lands, there is a lot of evaporation. One of the consequences of the fact that you are not flushing your soil and the water is provided to the root zone only and goes up with capillary forces and evaporation, you may end up in a salinization problem with more and more salts is being accumulated on the surface. And then, as you said. once in a while, and this is something that you have to monitor to make a decision how often, you need to flush the soil. So you need to really let the water go way below the root zone for like several weeks, just flush it.
But in most places, even after flushing, you are still saving a lot of water if you compare it to the other alternatives.
[00:40:47] Bridget Scanlon: And so are you growing high value crops then? Because I mean they need to be high value too with the cost of providing the water and the irrigation systems and the computer systems that the farmers had to operate to manage. So it seemed like maybe Israel is mostly growing high value crops then for their own use and also I guess for export to Europe.
[00:41:09] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah, exactly. It's, and it's both the cost and the land. I mean, we are not exactly Texas and land is extremely expensive here. So you cannot grow too much wheat in Israel or cotton or things like that. It just doesn't make sense. So these things, cotton is not food, but, still, and so we are importing most of our grains, very little is being produced in or grown in Israel in most of the farmers are. yeah, growing the cash crop. I mean, yeah, and
[00:41:41] Bridget Scanlon: a lot of vegetables and other things,
Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And it's funny, I know that you mentioned, for irrigation stuff. So actually it's coming back into vogue because they're using it in California in the winter when they have excess surface water. So they call it flood managed aquifer recharge. In these, nut tree areas like almonds and other things and they find that it doesn't negatively impact the trees.
And so it's actually being used to recharge the aquifer. So inefficient surface water can actually recharge groundwater. And so they're recognizing that more. And so when they have excess surface water in wet years, like when they have atmospheric rivers or other things, then they're using that. We had to recharge the groundwater, but they don't call it furrow irrigation.They call it flood managed up for a recharge.
[00:42:34] Noam Weisbrod: Yeah. I'm actually not really involved, but one of our new faculty member that was my PhD student did his postdoc in UC Davis exactly on that. So I was there. We had a BARD proposal funded together, so I was there and I've seen that. Yeah,it's a very interesting concept.
[00:42:52] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right, yeah. So, so there are lots of different ways to adapt and we've been talking for almost an hour and I would like to... Maybe just to try to summarize, I guess, Israel is just amazing. And as you indicate, you mentioned many times, it's a small country, so you can do different things, but it's amazing what they have accomplished.
I mean, building that pipeline system, the national water carriers. which,California did in the mid last century too. I don't think we would build those today. I don't know, the cost and everything is just amazing what they accomplished doing that. And that a centralized carrier then allows you to transport water all over the country.
Then the advances in desalination and wastewater and then the agreement with Jordan and energy and water trade offs and using water for peace. It's a really amazing what you guys are accomplishing. And then with your institute, training people and now developing this bachelor's program so that these people can go back to other countries and apply these advances. So what do you think, what's your outlook for the future? I mean, do you, are you optimistic, about water resources in Israel and then what you guys can contribute through your institute to other regions?
[00:44:14] Noam Weisbrod: Well, first of all, I think you've summarized things much better than I could.
So good job, Bridget. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think that in Israel, I think that the future in terms of water, and I'm not talking about other things now, is pretty, pretty good. I mean, I think that we will be stable. One of the important things about desalination is that you pretty much disconnect yourself from climate instability because you don't, I mean, you care if it's rainy year or if it's, dry or drought and this, but you know, the Mediterranean is there.
And, the water level change can be a few centimeters. It's not a big deal. And since 80% of our water is from desalination, we are pretty safe. I wouldn't say we don't care about climate change, but it's less of an impact in terms of our water resources. So this is a very important aspect as well.
It's not only additional source. It's a source that is independent of climate instability. So I think it's very good. I hope that there will be more and more collaboration over water between Israel and our neighboring countries and the Gulf countries that following Abraham Accords we can work with.
And we already have some collaboration with the, a lot of collaboration with Morocco and some collaboration with United Arab Emirates. And so, which, which is very promising. And very interesting. And I think also very important because again, we're in the same neighborhood and we should, we must work together.
it's very important. It's just, it's not just a sentence. It's really important. So I think, and I hope that we will become more and more, kind of a hub for the desert technology in general, and especially water related dry land or desert technologies. I'm getting more and more phone calls from Europe, for example, that until a few years ago, we thought that, I would get phone calls from Europe, from Italy. try to think what we can do to work on our water resources. Europe is dry, is getting drier and drier. And they are facing huge problems with water that only a decade ago, people wouldn't even dream that it's going to be a problem. And I'm not only talking about Andalusia in the southern part of Spain or say, I mean, I'm talking about Germany and talking about, different countries.
More and more problems. So I think that what we are doing, you and I, is becoming more and more important to larger and larger parts of the world. At the same time, I'm working a lot in developing countries. Tomorrow morning, I'm flying to the Aral Sea, to Uzbekistan. I think that it's much more complicated.let's be honest here. It's much more complicated from different aspects, but I think that our know how and technologies are very important there. And you can see that slowly they are adopting more and more. Things are starting to move. It's not in the right rate. And, things are happening slow, but it is happening.
And I think that the understanding thing, of the importance of water and water technologies and water education and all the fields around water because water is not like, it's, it's very multilingual disciplinary. So let's see that I can see myself having a lot of vacation in the next few years.
There's a lot of work for people like you and me. Yeah. But I think that we need to be optimistic.
[00:47:44] Bridget Scanlon: Well, I mean, I really appreciate your taking the time today, Noam. And you raise an important point in having a climate resilient, water resource system that is resilient to climate extremes. And that's a very important also. I remind our listeners that our guest today is Noam Weisbrod, he is the Dean of the Desert Research Institute at Ben Gurion University. And I think Ronit Nativ would be very proud of you, Noam, and what you've done. You have been accomplishing and what you continue to do and doing great work. And I look forward to collaborating in the future.
Thank you so much for doing this podcast with me.
[00:48:25] Noam Weisbrod: Thank you so much, Bridget. It was great. Thanks a lot.
