During its first decade, Ramat Hovav operated on an easy-going basis, with locally produced and trucked in wastes were haphazardly received, stored and treated. At the time, effluents with low levels of pollutants were even released into the nearby Nahal Secher, which then flowed into Nahal Beer-Sheva, southwest of the city. Noxious fumes released by factories into the atmosphere could also be detected for miles around. It was thought at first that the natural hydrogeological structure under the Ramat Hovav and its surrounding areas would provide effective containment for the hazardous effluents. However, this was soon met with the observation of elevated pollution in the underlying groundwater and perennial, contaminated seepage from this near-surface aquifer into desert streams.
Faced with Israel’s rapidly expanding production and processing of industrial chemicals, the hazardous waste processing site had to begin operating with greater effectiveness and accountability. For this reason, a commercial venture, theRamat Hovav Environmental Services Company, was set up by the Israel government in 1990 to build state-of-the-art waste-treatment facilities. In a second groundbreaking decision, the whole area of Ramat Hovav was reorganized into Israel’s first Industrial Local Council, an administrative unit that would be responsible for collecting and treating wastes produced by plants in the industrial park. The Council’s waste treatment and other activities are supported through taxation as well as by enforcement of regulations requiring resident factories to engage in their own pollution-reduction activities. With these new tools, advanced strategies for toxic waste abatement were adopted, which included the construction of a bio-chemical and microbial treatment plant for each factory (and in some cases, for individual production lines), 150 hectares (371 acres) of evaporation ponds (lagoons), a storage facility for solid wastes, and an incinerator for organic wastes.
The first suspicious findings began appearing in the middle 80s when the shallow groundwater underlying Ramat Hovav began to elevate due to seepage of improperly stored liquid wastes. This contaminated aquifer water — at lower elevations — then started exiting its underground layers as polluted perennial flows moving down local desert-runoff beds. Deep monitoring holes drilled through the underlying Eocene chalk formation to the water table confirmed that the brackish groundwater had deteriorated. In addition, new “springs” emerged in the area with heavily contaminated water and previously dug shallow wells that had released fresh, drinkable water began sprouting brown, odoriferous, highly polluted water. This was particularly troubling because Bedouin tribes living in area depended on the wells for their families and livestock. Obviously, stored hazardous waste products in the evaporation lagoons were somehow making their way down through the chalk, which was not as impervious as had been assumed.
