IDE Technologies will build and operate a new desalination plant in the Western Galilee
| Erez Raviv, Devar News
IDE Technologies, which is owned by Delek Group (TASE:), will build and operate a new desalination facility in the Western Galilee. The inter-ministerial tender committee for seawater desalination jointly with the ministries of finance, energy, the water authority and the Inbal company, headed by Amit Marzai, director of the infrastructure and PPP projects unit at the Accountant General, today (Thursday) chose the company as the winner of the PPP tender for financing, construction, operation and maintenance for 25 years of the facility the new
The facility will join the ranks of the desalination facilities currently existing in Israel that were established in the last two decades using the PPP method. The facility is expected to increase the production capacity of desalinated water by about 13% and will enable the connection of the northern region to the national water system. The construction works of the desalination facility will begin as early as the beginning of 2023, and will last approximately two and a half years, with the water supply from the facility expected to begin in 2025.
The Western Galilee facility, which will be located north of Nahariya, will be the seventh desalination facility in Israel, with an output of 100 million cubic meters of water per year. Today, about 65% of domestic and industrial consumption in Israel is from desalinated water. Upon completion of its construction, the total water production from the desalination facilities will be 895 cubic meters per year, which is about 90% of the total consumption of benign water in the economy for the home and industry.
In addition to the importance of adding water in light of the expected increase in water consumption resulting from demographic growth, there is an importance in connecting the northern region to the national water system, which until now has relied mainly on borehole water, the production of which is expected at least due to dehydration and due to climate changes in the coming years.
IDE Technologies previously established and operated the desalination facilities in Hadera, and in Shurk 1, which it sold in order to compete in tenders for the construction of the new desalination facilities in Shurk 2, which it won in 2020, and the facility in the Western Galilee which it won now. In 2019, it was discovered that IDE and Hutchison, who operated Sorek 1, violated the concession agreement and for a year and a half provided the state with desalinated water at a salinity level that exceeded the threshold defined in the agreement between the state and the concessionaire – but this did not prevent them from winning the two new tenders.
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