Water, Water Everywhere (Article# 110) 3/19/2009

Purim was, as usual, quite awesome here. It might have been a bit chilly with temps in the 60s or so, but that certainly beats the frigid weather we used to face in the U.S. In Israel, even the secular celebrate Purim in some form, so you get to see a lot of people/kids in costume.

Several years ago I had designed a Fred Flintstone costume (sewn for me quite professionally by Bina Zaiman) that was really cool. Unfortunately it was stained with motor oil one year and inadvertently discarded. I loved that costume and decided that this year I would revive it (thanks to third cousin Shulamit Felsenthal for sewing it at the last minute).

Chaya decided that she wanted to be a box of popcorn and created her entire costume almost on her own (I sewed the popcorn necklace) and designed a mishloach manot to match. Aliza had planned to be a terrorist, but in a moment of teen indifference decided to skip the entire costume thing this year. Batya was Minnie Mouse, Mordechai a Power Ranger, and Moshe was an incredibly muscular Spiderman (all the superhero costumes here seemed to have padded muscles in them resulting in some incredibly sculpted little kids running around).

Chaim has been way too cool to put on a costume the past few years (see Aliza above), but at the last minute he decided to be a golfer. He grabbed my clubs and really put together a nice look. (I miss golf—there is only one very expensive course here that I am aware of and I haven’t played in almost three years)

The approach to mishloach manot is much different here. We belong to two shuls. Both of them have “community” mishloach manot programs and it is understood that with the exception of the four or five families that you are closest to, participation in the shul mishloach manot really does count (in Woodmere we had a huge list of people we delivered to each year, no matter what).

The focus here (at least in our part of Bet Shemesh) is on the kids. They throw themselves wholeheartedly into the celebration. Our kids packed their packages several days before Purim and had their lists all drawn up for me to prepare. I think that between the six kids they delivered around 130–140 mishloach manot bags. Yeah, I did spend the day in the car.

We had former Five Towners Chanoch (formerly Alan) and Naomi Schwartz and their family as well as our steady Friday double date couple Dani and Tzippy Lieberman and their family for the seudah. With a house packed full of little kids (ours and the Liebermans’) and teenagers (ours and the Schwartzes’), the atmosphere was definitely festive and fun. The only downer was my having to run out to the yeshiva for Shushan Purim at the end (try celebrating both regular and Shushan Purim—it is exhausting).

At the seudah, Goldie mentioned that she was glad that it hadn’t rained that day; there had been a 40% chance of rain predicted for Purim morning. I disagreed. Even though we stopped adding the special tefillah for rain in Shemoneh Esreih (and I have no idea why), we are in real trouble here. A few wet kids would definitely have been worth it.

Over the past month I have become more and more engrossed in the saga that is Israel’s water system. The ecological balance of the system is incredibly precarious and allows for very little error. Throw in a few years of low rainfall and disaster is sure to occur (as it is about to).

The best indicator of the current crisis is the Kinneret Lake. It supplies around 40% of the country’s water. Since the other 60% of the water comes from similar sources (aquifers, reservoirs, etc.) the Kinneret level pretty accurately reflects the level of those sources as well.

All of these sources are considered “renewable,” meaning that they are continually replenished by the rain that falls each year. Unfortunately, these resources are also finite and our consumption level is more that 95% of the amount of rain we get in a normal year. When rainfall is below normal, the reserve levels of these water sources are used. Unfortunately, this has happened for several years in a row and we are now in serious trouble here. Or will be soon.

The media here is covering the story regularly and the water authority’s conservation push is also making people aware of the crisis. I myself track the information via the water authority’s website (as I wrote a couple of weeks ago) and post the results on my Facebook profile in order to increase awareness of the situation.

My sister dropped me a note that she just saw that we are less than two meters above the Black Line—a Kinneret level she had never heard of before. She asked what that meant, and wondered why we are so focused on the Red Line?

There are several “lines” in the Kinneret. There is the full line/Upper Red Line, the Lower Red Line, and there is the new Black Line which was only defined last year.

The Upper Red Line equals 208 meters and 80 centimeters below sea level (–208.80). This is what the Kinneret has measured when full to capacity—before flooding. At this level, they open the Deganya Dam and allow the overflow to drain into the Jordan River to prevent flooding.

The Lower Red Line is –213.00. When the water level is below this line, the water is considered to have higher than desired amounts of contaminants and pollutants in it. This is not good! This level is also two meters above the Black Line.

The Black Line is –215.00. When the water level goes down to this level, the water pumps that the national water authority uses to pump water are exposed. If the water is below the pump level, they obviously cannot pump water. Assuming the other water sources are similarly low (having experienced the same drought that currently plagues the Kinneret), the loss of the Kinneret’s 40% contribution to the water reserves will quickly overburden the system and the country will be effectively dry. Also not such a good thing.

So why all the focus on the Lower Red Line? Well, aside from the health issues involved with drinking water having abnormally high levels of contaminants and pollutants in it, it is a key marker for how close we will get to the Black Line during the summer/fall, before the next rainy season kicks in.

Traditionally, the Kinneret loses about one and a half meters in height each dry season, but it is supposed to recover during the rainy season. However, the past several years have seen less than average rainfall and the levels never recovered. Each year’s high level was lower than the prior year’s high.

Last year, the Kinneret lost two meters from its high point of the year to the low point of the year. Yes, it was abnormal—most years are only one and a half, but it does makes sense. After all, as the water level lowers, the lake itself narrows. A narrower lake means that there is less cubic meters of water per centimeter of lake height than normal, resulting in more dramatic changes in height than in normal years.

If we were to duplicate last year’s drop of close to two meters of height from the Kinneret during the dry season, in order to ensure that we do not reach the black line, the Kinneret needs to be at least two meters above the black line at its high point (sometime in April/May). The Lower Red Line is two meters above the Black Line. The bottom of the Kinneret is something like –254, so this is not a significant factor.

It ain’t going dry—we are!