Method to save Galilee

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32689, 19 August 1971, Page 26

Method to save Galilee

(By

MARTIN ZUCKER,

, of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

TABCHA (Israel).

Israeli scientists say they have found a method to save the historical Sea of Galilee, which is becoming overgrown with algae.

Scientists have traced an unnatural increase in the growth of the water plants to an excess of nitrates being carried into the lake by the Jordan River. The nitrates are used as nutrients by algae. Up to 5000 tons are swept into the lake annually, influencing the growth of the plant life and making the water increasingly more dangerous to drink.

Professor Y. Avnimelech, head of the soil and fertilisers laboratory at the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology, in Haifa, has headed a three-year research project on the problem.-

Now, he says, his team has found a way to curb the flow of nitrates into the lake. Professor Avnimelech took journalists into the hot Hula Valley, north of the lake, and showed them the peat-like, compost soil of the 5000-acre area which he said was the source of the problem. His team, he said, had tried to find a way to stop the nitrates—formed by the fusion of oxygen and nitrogen in the soil—from reaching the canals and irrigation ditches. These waterways, like capillaries, merge into the Jordan before it empties into the Sea of Galilee.

The solution described by Avnimelech involves a light, sprinkling irrigation system. The water seeps through the top soil and pulls the nitrates down into lower layers where they gradually disappear. “We are convinced this will work,” the professor said, adding that his team is seeking about SUS3O,OOO for final large-scale field testing to determine the best type of equipment to use. So far, he

said, the research had cost about $U535,000. Professor Avnimelech said that the Israeli Government reclamation campaign 15 years ago, which turned the swamp and mosquito wasteland of the Hula into arable farm land, had not proved as successful as hoped. He said the farming in the area has not lived up to expectations. In addition, he added, “we now know the drainage upset the ecological balance." Originally, the nitrogen was trapped in the Hula soil by the cover of marsh water and blocked from reaching the Sea of 'Galilee. Dr C. Serruya, the scientist in charge of a Government freshwater laboratory on the lake shore, said the algae growth was not dangerous to health now, but it could be within 10 years. “The lake is on the fringe of being polluted,” she said, “and if the nitrate inflow were to continue unchecked this water would become undrinkable.”