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The Water Authority's new water statutes are expected to raise Eilat residents' water bills by around 40%! While the cost per cubic metre (m3) of water used will not rise, the allocation for personal ‘gardening use', which was at a much lower rate, will be removed, as will the allocation for public landscaping. With the ‘gardening use' allocation removed, the sewage fee exemption for the water under that category will be gone as well. With the change, now after the first 8 m3 of water used, the rate will jump to 7.5 NIS/ m3 and sewage fees charged on all water used. Eilatis will be hit particularly hard by the price increase due to the extreme heat here requiring the day and night use of desert coolers that use water, the high evaporation rate drying out our gardens that much quicker, and absurdities like having to run the tap a few minutes in order not to get scalded.
However, it's not even the residents running up Eilat's usage compared to other cities as much as it is the hotels, which constitute 40% of the consumption, and the Municipality, which is planting more and more lawns and parks. And not just because it's an election year. The City spent over 12 million shekels on water bills last year, and is now planting even more greenery in recent months. All this, it should be remembered, when the country is in a water crisis. The City claims that there is no problem, that it uses public monies wisely, was rated as ‘most efficient Municipality' by BDI economists, and that in any case there is a programme underway to use treated effluent water on public gardens that, when fully implemented, would save the city 6m shekels annually and save the State over 2m m3 of desalinated water. However, that programme is still in its infancy and far from relevant at the moment, as well as having its own costs.
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Some people might say that Eilat shouldn't care, as our water is not from Lake Kinneret (‘Sea of Galilee', which is at a severe low), but from desalinated sea water and well water. Or that we shouldn't pay elevated prices because we are not part of the consumption drawing from the depleted Kinneret. However, desalination costs a lot of money, and it is the government that pays for subsidising it, like it does for pumping from the Kinneret, so that Eilatis won't have to pay more than the rest of the country even though desalination costs more than pumping does. Desalination also has an environmental impact, as it uses energy, which contributes to pollution and global warming.
Something not all Eilatis may be aware of is that the water being desalinated for our use is a combination of seawater and groundwater from wells drilled in the Arava desert. Seawater costs even more to desalinate than the briny groundwater, as it requires more treatment. Groundwater, on the other hand, is a more finite resource that must be conserved.
Some people spoke about drying up gardens, but even that is problematic because most buildings involve shared garden area (and fees), resulting in given residents foregoing their own landscaping while still paying water rates for others who kept theirs. The head of the Ein Netafim water corporation (that supplies Eilat), Ms. Chen Salti, suggests that there are more feasible ways to save water than having to give up gardens, while suggesting that those who do have gardens forego lawns and those plants and trees not suited to a desert environment.
Eilat Today compiled tens of water-saving tips relevant to Eilatis in its article Every Drop is Precious written long before we know that water prices would jump so drastically. Now they become even more important. It is not only public solidarity with the rest of a country which is going through one of the worse droughts it has known that should make us save water. By saving water we are saving not only on government spending of our taxes, but on depletion of groundwater resources, pollution from desalination and other treatment processes, and on our personal water and sewage bills.
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