Part of the route of the planned red line of the Tel Aviv subway system passes through the area of the most contaminated soils in the country, above and below groundwater reservoirs. This is also true of the planned Metro system. Who among us knows this fact, a year before the line is to begin operations? Good question. Some questions are probably better left unasked, after an investment of some NIS 18 billion and years of delays.
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"The hazards posed by these findings include possible harm to workers digging the train route and the spread of poisonous gases in the subway tunnel while it is being excavated, and later, and harm to train passengers. There may be harmful effects to infrastructure, such as corrosion of cables. A high concentration of fuel emissions in a closed space may cause explosions." These and other alarming findings appear in a forgotten report written by the Knesset's research department nearly 20 years ago.
It appears that thousands of acres of soils throughout the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area (Gush Dan), worth tens of billions of shekels, were contaminated by volatile organic compounds and heavy metals produced by Israel's military-industrial complex. One of the most common sources of soil pollution is contamination by fuels and oils, which can cause pollution of groundwater and create health hazards arising from exposure to carcinogenic materials.
Thus, one liter of fuel consisting of a mixture of compounds, some of which are known as carcinogenic materials, can contaminate a million liters of groundwater. The scope of the pollution isn't really known, since the compounds in question are volatile, meaning they evaporate easily and are invisible. Some of them are poisonous and spread as gases that can penetrate underground parking garages and basements and harm people living or working there, specifically workers digging in the soil for construction purposes. But they, as is well known, are in any case invisible in Israel.
Despite the clear and major contribution of the state-owned Israel Military Industries to the country's security, the environmental havoc its plants wreaked throughout Israel should not be taken lightly. The environmental damage the company's activities caused is rarely discussed.
IMI's plants caused severe contamination of the coastal aquifer, which is the potable water reservoir of Gush Dan, as well as other sites and soils. It curtails residential construction on thousands of dunams in central Israeli cities, including Ramat Hasharon, Hod Hasharon, Herzliya, Rehovot, and Jerusalem. Thus, it has caused the delay of new construction on a scale of a medium-sized city in the last area remaining in the heart of the most in-demand region in Israel, on the IMI Ramat Hasharon lands. The construction of tens of thousands of housing units throughout the country is thwarted due to the environmental damage left by IMI. "The polluter pays" – this environmental principle does not apply in Israel.
Last week, the government decided to submit a plan to the National Planning and Building Committee for Priority Housing Areas (Vatmal) for the construction of 4,500 housing units on IMI soils in Tirat HaCarmel. It will be interesting to follow the plan's progress. These soils, too, are contaminated with a variety of pollutants, such as chlorinated solvents and metals.
Environmental ignorance
IMI, or IMI, was founded in 1933, before the establishment of the state, and was fundamental in protecting the strength and security of the Jewish populace (the Yishuv). IMI engaged in the research, development, and manufacture of weapons, ammunition, and military systems. The company accumulated many achievements in its field, but protecting the environment was not one of them, to put it mildly.
In November 2018 IMI was sold to Elbit Systems for $495 million. Since then, the past is no longer the problem of the new IMI, but rather of the Ministry of Defense and a new company founded for this purpose – Netzer Hasharon. Entire cities can be built on the lands formerly occupied by IMI plants; however, purifying the soil can take many years – and in the meantime, land prices are skyrocketing. Of course, purification will have to be a part of any future deal.
IMI plants are spread throughout the country, in areas that are today in high demand. At the Nof Yam – Apollonia compound in Herzliya, the IMI plant manufactured explosives, ammunition, and gunpowder; its Magen compound in Tel Aviv produced weapons; rocket systems were produced at the Eliyahu compound in Ramat Hasharon; a variety of metal products were produced at the Beit HaKerem compound in Jerusalem; the Givon compound in Rehovot develops and produces rocket systems; the Tirat Carmel compound manufactures metal parts for various types of ammunition; and the list goes on.
When the company was founded, environmental awareness was not what it is today. Environmental surveys have shown that IMI plants, like many industrial plants in Israel and worldwide, used, at best, cesspools to dispose of industrial waste containing hazardous materials. In cesspools, the waste seeps into the soil as raw, unprocessed material, leading to severe pollution of the undersoil and groundwater. At worst, the plants would just spill the hazardous materials straight onto the surrounding terrain.
Already in the 1980s, military industries in the U.S. discovered that the use of hazardous materials of the kind used by IMI – particularly perchlorate, which is a kind of rocket fuel unique to IMI uses – is a public health hazard. This material can cause widespread contamination when spilled directly on the ground and allowed to seep into the groundwater. The main fear is that it may cause damage to the thyroid gland.
The use of cesspools in industry was prohibited entirely in water regulations issued in 1992; surprisingly, however, IMI – then owned by the state – continued to use cesspools at its plants until at least 2000. For about 70 years, IMI polluted the land it sat on and the water sources in its surroundings. A solution to this problem has yet to be found.
Purification before construction
In the State Comptroller's Report from 2005, in the chapter titled "IMI Lands – Soil and Groundwater Contamination and the Preparation of Outline Plans," the comptroller warned that "in light of the dangers posed by the contamination of the soil and the water, it is vital that all the parties involved, including the Finance Ministry, act urgently based on a comprehensive and publicly responsible outlook, in harmony and within a reasonable time framework, to treat the soil contamination, prevent the further contamination of groundwater, and treat the water already contaminated."
The ongoing neglect by IMI and the state to find a solution for purifying the soil and the aquifer led to the rapid spread of contaminants, following changes in the soil and the flow of groundwater. Thus, sites of severe contamination were created in the most in-demand real estate areas.
This was noted recently by the Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Amit, in a ruling on the Vatmal plan for the IMI Nof Yam (Apollonia) compound: "One cannot but wonder at the state's failure to adhere to its own timetable. As detailed, the state committed to perform a hazard survey in a discussion held on 21.5.2007, that is, almost 12 years ago (!!). This it failed to fulfill, and also failed to adhere to its later commitment, to complete the survey by August 2016. This conduct, or lack thereof, on the part of the state, which is a violation of explicit commitments it took upon itself in this court of law, is, to put it mildly, hard to counter."
When evacuating the IMI compound in Ramat Hasharon, the planning authorities sought to implement a plan for residential and industrial space on a huge territory of 7,430 dunams, with 36,000 housing units and some 1,650,000 sq.m. of construction for non-residential uses. The forecast for the population of the compound is about 80,000 residents and about 40,000 workers.
These territories will be added to existing cities, but in terms of the plan's size, it amounts to the addition of a city in the country's center. That could have been a welcome solution to the housing crisis in the Gush Dan area.
But according to the municipalities of Ramat Hasharon and Herzliya, which petitioned the Court of Administrative Matters with a request to cancel the plan, the planning authorities did not take into account the heavy pollution of the IMI Ramat Hasharon lands, which spread beyond the plan's boundaries. They argue that the plan cannot be approved before the contaminated soil is treated.
The petition is led by Adv. Tamar Migdal – head of the Planning and Construction Law Group at Meitar Law Offices – and Adv. Gidi Frishtik, head of the firm's Environmental Law Group. The petition addresses the alleged flaws in the decision of the district committee to approve the plan.
Soil purification is not a simple matter and requires a massive investment of funds. According to the state's response, "the soil is occupied by a vital security plant and is deeply contaminated. According to estimates, its treatment requires investing sums totaling billions of shekels." The plan has been delayed for over 15 years, with no adequate solution yet found.
One of the main problems is the spread of contamination due to gases moving swiftly through soil cavities. These gases can penetrate structures through fissures, holes, and openings in the floor and the walls. The penetration of poisonous and carcinogenic gases into a structure represents a public health hazard.
This phenomenon is common in underground spaces such as basements and parking garages, but is also seen in above-ground structures that come into direct contact with the ground.
For example, the completion of the towers in Nahlat Yitzhak in Tel Aviv was delayed for years due to gases detected in the parking basements and originating in the operations of IMI Magen. In the neighborhood near the IMI Magen compounds in Ramat Hasharon, radon gas has been detected.
The Environmental Protection Ministry drew up regulations for protecting buildings from soil gases. The State of Israel, in its response to the petition, cited the building protection regulation as a solution for the existence of poisonous gases in the ground. It wrote that "The planning apparatus knows how to deal with this phenomenon" by means of the building protection regulation. In other words, not by solving the problem, but by protecting buildings from it. The state seeks to transfer the responsibility and costs of building protection onto the contractors who are to build on the land.
In other words, these costs will eventually be absorbed by the end users – apartment buyers.
Another example can be seen in the Nof Yam compound in Herzliya. Though the IMI plants there were vacated in 1996, the environmental damage is still felt. In 2014, the authorities approved a plan for building 3,000 housing units and a national park, without conducting an environmental risk survey.
The Supreme Court ruled that the plan's submission must be canceled, since "The risks posed by these materials and the different ways of treating them, their effectiveness, the length of the treatment, and its possible consequences (including for residents living near the plan's territory or on clean adjacent lands) were not presented to the committee or discussed by it."
The court further ruled that "The order of priorities for treating the lands where contamination is found, choosing alternatives for treating the contaminants, and regulating the construction and operation of purifying facilities for this purpose (if such are needed), require examination and the balancing of various considerations (health-related, environmental, and economic) and setting directives appropriate to one choice or other." Finally, the court ruled that these are "planning decisions that cannot be left for the execution stage."
The right to a clean environment
Experts on environmental law explain that this precedent-setting ruling is instrumental for securing the right to an adequate environment. As clarified in the response of the state to the Ramat Hasharon and Herzliya petition, "The government, like any rational body, is not interested in entering into a very high-cost enterprise without minimal planning certainty regarding the end product of the planning, specifically an answer to the question of whether the planning product can cover the costs involved in evacuating the IMI compound and purifying the soil."
This implies that the state will not take upon itself the costs of the purification unless it recognizes a potential for profit. This, despite the fact that the IMI plants, which operated under its auspices, are the source of the pollution.
The ruling of the Supreme Court obligates the planning authorities, that is, the state, to implement a different planning model that will, in one way or another, include the costs of purification before the profit potential is apparent, as a condition for allowing the development of the polluted lands.
Adv. Frishtik is skeptical regarding the ability to implement environmental programs, specifically with regard to soil contamination. "Experience shows that enforcing regulations, including environmental ones, is relegated to the local authorities, which in practice are responsible for issuing building permits and supervising the implementation of building laws. The budgets allocated for these programs are not transferred to the local authorities, therefore they are unable to realize them.
An example is the obligation that the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment placed on contractors building on sites where the existence of soil gases is suspected. The building protection protocol, which includes instructions for isolation and for air circulation devices, was issued by the ministry; however, those expected to ensure its implementation are the planning and building bodies of the local authorities and their supervision departments, and this does not always happen."
An exceptional example is the Beit HaKerem compound in Jerusalem, which was vacated in the mid-1990s. During the evacuation, environmental surveys were performed to examine the soil and the groundwater. The surveys' findings led the authorities to carry out actions for purifying the soil and the groundwater, which were found to be highly contaminated. The purification actions, which began in the 2000s and were performed in three stages, were not successful, and the ground remained contaminated, with the contamination spreading.
In 2019, rehabilitation operations at the compound began for the fourth time. These works were completed only recently, in the hope that this time they were successful. An encouraging finding: as of November 2020, about 6,300 tons of contaminated soil were removed from the site.
Stopping the spread
You're probably wondering whether this issue may affect your current place of residence, and not only the future housing market. The answer is yes, as shown by a survey of two other IMI compounds.
The IMI Givon plant was founded in the mid-1960s. It encompasses 1,000 dunams on the eastern edges of the coastal aquifer, south of Ramla, between Moshav Matzliah and Moshav Yashresh.
According to the Stage A Report Assessing the Extent of Contamination of Water Sources, published by the Water Authority in 2012, the plant develops and produces weapon systems according to the operational needs of the IDF, including the development and manufacture of rocket systems. To this end it employs massive quantities of various chemicals, including hazardous materials such as perchlorate. Like other IMI plants, it, too, used cesspools, thereby severely contaminating the coastal aquifer.
In the State Comptroller's Report for 2013, titled "Aspects of Environmental Protection in the Security Industries," the Comptroller stated that all the bodies involved in treating the contamination caused by IMI Givon failed utterly. "The government authority for water and sewage, the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment, and IMI, which caused the contamination of the soil and groundwater by the Givon site, failed in the treatment of these contaminants, each body in its own sphere of activity. This is a severe flaw that has gone on for years, despite the public health hazard, the damage caused to scarce natural water sources, and the cost of rehabilitating these water sources, which is growing due to the continued spread of the contamination."
Despite the stark warnings and many reprimands, the state's authorities did nothing to minimize the contamination and stop its spread and did not budget an action plan led by the Water Authority. The contamination plume, which moved quicky westwards, was detected in agriculture wells in Rehovot and in wells at the Weizmann Institute, some 5 kilometers west of the plant.
When perchlorate was detected in these wells, the Ministry of Health began imposing restrictions on water use by farmers and the Weizmann Institute. The Institute was required to build a water optimization facility at a cost of tens of millions of shekels.
In other words, the state's way of dealing with the contamination it caused is to impose restrictions and obligations on the victims of the contamination, rather than taking direct responsibility for its deeds and misdeeds, as required from any body that creates pollution, according to the well-known environmental principle – the polluter pays.
This principle entered the Israeli legal system by the back door. It should have been legislated primary legislation, as proposed in the Land Rehabilitation Bill (which was halted at its second reading in the Knesset in 2011), which seeks to place direct responsibility for purifying the soil on the polluter.
This principle has many purposes, first among them social justice and increased social effectiveness, to be achieved by obliging the polluting factor to carry the cost of the pollution. It is not surprising that the bill was halted, since the state is the largest polluter of Israel's soil and water. Passing the bill would mean investing huge sums in remedying the state's failures.
This was exactly the subject of a petition by the Weizmann Institute and the Rehovot Municipality to the High Court of Justice last August. The petition, submitted by Adv. Gidi Frishtik and his team at the Meitar firm – Adv. David Shachor and Hadar Arel-Kashpitzky, focused on the request to obligate the state authorities, including the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment, the Water Authority, the Ministry of Health, and Netzer Hasharon, to act immediately to advance a plan for purifying the groundwater contaminated by IMI Givon – before irreversible damage is caused to the aquifer and the wells serving the area's residents.
The consequences of the state's failures will not go away of their own accord; the contamination will not purify itself, and placing responsibility on the end users will not increase social-environmental effectiveness. On the contrary. Shirking responsibility will only deepen the crisis, increase contamination, and destroy natural resources – the soil and the water, necessary for the continuation of life in Israel.
In the state's response to the petition, it explicitly admits the existence of water contamination caused by the IMI Givon site, and that the plant's lands are contaminated and require treatment. The state notes that it has taken preliminary steps to advance a rehabilitation program, and therefore asks to notify the court within a short time regarding a budget source for executing the program.
Back to the effects of the IMI Givon contamination. Tamal 3003 is a plan to build a new residential neighborhood that will include 6,920 housing units alongside industrial and commercial space. The plan is to be implemented on agricultural lands on the east side of Rehovot, between Highway 40 and the territory of the Weizmann Institute.
The Water Authority, which has been vigorously demanding budgetary sources for over a decade to purify the groundwater in this region, seeks to connect Tamal 3003 with the groundwater rehabilitation program – itself a welcome initiative that will advance the rehabilitation of the aquifer. But it is as yet unknown what effects the rehabilitation program will have on the Tamal plan and on landowners in these areas.
Too polluted for occupancy
The last example that demonstrates the state's incompetency is the IMI Magen compound, located in Tel Aviv. The plant manufactured weapons, and through its cesspools, the soil beneath it absorbed contaminants. The compound encompasses 44 dunams and is located in one of the most in-demand areas in the country. It was vacated in the mid-1990s, but the heavy pollution prevents residential occupancy.
In 1999, a tender was issued for purifying the soil in the Magen compound; however, since no budgetary source was found, the tender was cancelled. In 2000, the Adam Teva V'Din non-profit organization petitioned the court requesting that it obligate IMI, the Ministry of Defense, and the Israel Land Authority to act to purify the soil.
In response, the State Attorney announced that IMI would be granted monetary authorization to begin purifying the compound soon. It was only last May, about 20 years later, that LDD Advanced Technologies signed a contract with the Tel Aviv Municipality to begin works for treating and purifying the soil and the water – works that are estimated to last about 25 months.
Tel Aviv frequently monitors the soil for the existence of poisonous gases and obligates buildings where soil gases are suspected to exist to implement the building protection protocol. As transpires from the Tel Aviv website, activities at IMI Magen contributed much to the existence of polluting soil gases in Tel Aviv.
In 2016, the government founded the Netzer Hasharon company to deal with the environmental damage caused by IMI. Netzer Hasharon acts to evacuate, purify, and rehabilitate compounds where defense-related and classified plants and facilities operate or operated in the past, including IMI.
The company performs research and treatment of polluted soils, purification, demolition, and evacuation of contaminated buildings, and research and rehabilitation of polluted groundwater at compounds used by IMI. In recent years, Netzer Hasharon's main activity centers on treating the contaminated soils at IMI Ramat Hasharon. The company employs experts in the environmental field and operates under professional instructions from the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment.
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Netzer Hasharon is a governmental company that is entirely state-owned, without external funding sources, operating according to budgetary authorizations and government decisions regarding the method and order of purifying the plants. This makes it less effective.
The examples cited above show that the State of Israel does not act to remedy its environmental failures and is usually unable to find budgetary sources for this purpose.
As apparent in the state comptroller reports on the subject, all this and more has been well known to the state for many years. Lawsuits by citizens, municipalities, non-profit organizations, and the victims of environmental pollution are a rather weak way of dealing with the state's refusal to take responsibility for its own pollution.
It seems the state authorities are repressing the real and urgent need to find a solution for purifying the soil and groundwater. Every day the environment grows more polluted. The preliminary scope of pollution was discovered over three decades ago. The time has come for the state to open its eyes and act to purify the heavy contamination.
We requested comments from the Ministry of Defense, which was in charge of the old IMI. We also contacted the new IMI and Netzer Hasharon. No one is willing to catch this hot potato and comment. In other words, as a senior official involved in the matter put it: "What's done cannot be undone."
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