A DESERT FANTASY
Within four years Blass engineered the two mammoth public-works proj-ects that have defined Israel's water supply strategy until today: the Yarkon-Negev pipeline and, a decade later, the National Water Carrier. Israel's natural water distribution is not suited to its geographic and eco-nomic circumstances. Although 78 percent of the rain falls north of Tel Aviv, most of the lands that need the water are in the south.[30] Moreover, fields, groves, and lawns are thirstiest in the summertime, precisely when the rain does not fall. These dynamics drove the form and content of the two infrastructure projects. In the hydrological equivalent of the prevailing socialist ethic, Israel's water system took from the rich and gave to the poor. Blass had been waiting thirteen years for the opportunity.
In 1939 British land restrictions had essentially shut down expansion of Jewish settlement in the north of Israel. Although land transfers and agricul-tural settlement were permissible in the south, British “flexibility” appeared disingenuous, because there was no water there. That spring Blass, then a pri-vate consultant, bumped into Dr. Arthur Rupin, the economist who chaired the Jewish Agency. Rupin said to him, “Mr. Blass, maybe you can propose to me a fantasy that would irrigate the Negev.” Blass jumped at the business op-portunity; he collected maps, chartered a rickety two-seater for aerial obser-vations (losing his lunch during the bumpy flight), and then hunkered down to work. A few months later he submitted a three-stage program: Pump water from the wells closest to the Negev; take water from the Yarkon
The project was tabled until after World War II. Its resurrection is part of Zionist legend. During the summer of 1946 the British imposed an eighty-hour curfew on Tel Aviv and arrested scores of Zionist activists, an action which became known in the Yishuv as the “Black Sabbath.” Levi Skolnick (Eshkol), who by then was head of the Jewish Agency Settlement Department, sought a creative form of revenge. The night after Yom Kippur, he staged a lightning campaign, creating eleven new Negev settle-ments on JNF lands. Blass was drafted to design the water delivery system. All the Mekorot team had to work with were tiny, recycled six-inch pipes that had been used in London during World War II to help firefighters counter the bombing attacks during the blitz. Now the pipes were to wind past Beer Sheva and irrigate the desert. Pinhas Sapir himself came down to command the operation, barking out orders in his imperious fashion. Measurements were taken a few steps ahead of the diggers, and safety pro-cedures were completely ignored.[31]
The project was completed before either the Mandatory government or the area's Bedouin could interfere. Only weeks before the outbreak of the War of Independence, a pair of pipelines connected the northern Negev desert to the center of the country. Together the pipes could carry only a million cubic meters of water a year, but stage one of Arthur Rupin's desert fantasy was complete (after the war the pipes were replaced by a system whose capacity was fifteen times greater).[32]
Once at Tahal, Blass and his new staff focused on stage two: the Yarkon-Negev pipeline, the first major water development project in the new State. The very speed with which the project was carried out ensured snags and, of course, improvisation. Menahem Kantor, who later became Israel's Water Commissioner, was on the Tahal team. He recalls the paucity of hy-drological data but also a willingness to modify the project when it became evident that mistakes would be made.[33]
The Yarkon-Negev project was completed in July 1955. It delivered one hundred million cubic meters of water to Negev settlements.[34] The line was based on a sixty-six-inch diameter pipe, the largest of its kind in the world (see Figure 18). The pumping stations were all built underground for security reasons. Blass insisted that they be run by diesel engines, be-cause he was convinced that in the next war the Arabs would succeed in bombing Israel's electric power stations.[35]
When it was completed in July 1955, Israel's politicians were happy to trumpet the Yarkon-Negev project as the pinnacle of Zionist ingenuity—opening up “barren” regions for settlement and making the desert bloom. But it also epitomized the environmental price tag of Zionist achievement—transforming the mighty Yarkon River into a smelly trickle of sewage and setting the stage for subsequent environmental disasters. The river's demise did not go unnoticed but was considered a necessary sacrifice for progress. That was before the days of environmental impact statements. Tahal did not think about the mess it left behind, and govern-ment leaders were not inclined to worry about it too much either.
The Ministry of Health's Sanitation Department, however, was con-cerned. Its field staff had checked oxygen levels across the Yarkon River and predicted an anaerobic stench in the heart of greater Tel Aviv.[36] The Reading power station lay at the outflow of the river to the sea, so the Ministry lobbied for the Israel Electric Company to release the station's cooling waters a few kilometers up the river. The Tel Aviv section of the Yarkon would enjoy a cleaner flow, even if it was seawater. There was also concern about the potential transfer of bilharzia (as had occurred in African water projects) as the water was moved from the Yarkon to the Negev; the Sanitation Department imposed snail control measures in response.[37]
The water pipeline produced at least one important institutional benefit: The Yarkon River problems forced Tel Aviv and its suburbs (Petah Tikva, Ramat Gan, Givataim, and B'nei Brak) to think about a regional solution to their waste discharges. The outcome was the establishment of a Dan “Union of Cities.”[38] This consortium of city governments teamed up to build a tem-porary sewage outflow, eight hundred meters into the sea (until then, the effluents were released at the edge of the Tel Aviv coastline, with predictably fetid results). By 1962 the Union of Cities completed a pipeline to a regional sewage aeration facility on the sand dunes south of the city, at a cost of ten million dollars.[39] The level of treatment was not high, and the odors from the settling ponds were sufficiently foul to provoke legal action.[40] Moreover, the overflow system was a major source of marine pollution. Yet it was a vast im-provement over dumping raw sewage onto Tel Aviv beaches. More important, in retrospect, it was the first stage of what would eventually become the Dan Sewage Project, the largest advanced treatment facility in the Middle East.[41]