After the driest January on record, Israel is faced with a huge problem in the form of a multi-year drought.  While fighting wars on multiple fronts and political haranguing, it appears Israel lacks a concrete plan regarding how to address a decreasing water supply in a climate that has not been friendly the past few years.

In fact, at a meeting today, Dr. Yosef Dreizen is expected to tell the “National Investigation Committee Regarding

the Water Crisis in Israel” that there is no plan for water beyond 2010 in Israel.

According to an article in the Jerusalem Post today, Dr. Dreizen said:

“While long-term planning was considered essential, it was never considered practical.  There was never an understanding that after seven years of plenty comes years of drought.” Moreover, he charged, until the transitional plan,  the water economy had no master plan at all for 30 years.

The water crisis has been years in the making.  According to an article in Haaretz:

“The water crisis is entirely our own doing,” says water expert Dr. Peretz Dar, whose water- saving plan was shelved by the Water Authority several years ago. “The government allocated funds for desalination plants but failed to allocate the resources for conservation. We could have reduced consumption by 10 percent and covered a large part of the accumulated deficit in the Kinneret and aquifers,” he says.

Israel is quickly becoming an international destination for clean technologies, including the electric car.  It’s a shame that the same attention isn’t being paid to what’s happening in its own backyard.

Photo credit: Treehugger

Go figure. The Israeli government’s emergency plan to tackle the water shortage has failed. When will people learn that the government can’t solve our problems. Anyway with the driest January on record, Israel is in desperate need of about 100 million cubic meters of water for 2009.

According to a report in Globes:” Shani added that the Water Authority’s emergency plan, designed to rescue the water economy from its difficult crisis, was being implemented, but that it was inadequate. “We are currently working on a further emergency plan, in partnership with other government ministries, to cope with the worsening drought,” he said.”

Once again I am baffled as to how a country that leads the world in water technology and exports it to countries in need, can’t deal with its’ own water problems.

Aside from implementing technology and preaching conservation, I think that the only real solution will be through prayer. We basically need everyone to pray for rain in the holy land.