Ramat Hovav

Ramat Hovav ( _he. רמת חובב) is Israel's main hazardous waste disposal facility, as well as an industrial zone, built in the Negev Desert in 1979. The nearest village is the largest unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, Wadi el-Na'am, directly adjacent, and the nearest city is the regional population center of Beer Sheva, 12 kilometers away.

In addition to housing the National Site for Treatment of Hazardous Waste (the only approved center for hazardous waste in the country) the Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone is the locus of 19 chemical factories, concentrating over half of Israel’s chemical plants on its 6,000 acres. 9 of these chemical factories (most notably the pesticide company, Machteshim, and the largest drug-producer in the world, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.) deal directly with hazardous material and utilize over 1,000 acres for evaporation pools which pollute the air and leach cancer-causing chemicals into the soil and water. [ [http://www.negev.org.il/index.php?m=text&t=2770 Negev Bar Kayma] ] As of 2008, construction began on a Ramat Hovav army base for career soldiers and their families, against widespread opposition (see below).

On August 28th, 2006, Ben Gurion University epidemiologist Batya Sarov, formerly a specialist at Chernobyl, told the Negev environmental justice organization BUSTAN: "The environmental monitoring at Chernobyl was better, and the health risks no more severe, than at Ramat Hovav." [ [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline] Bustan, 2006] The findings of a 2004 study commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Health pointed to high rates of birth defects among children in surrounding villages and cities. [Sarov, Batia, and peers at Ben Gurion University: [http://bustan.org/2006/04/bgu_study_on_ramat_hovav_summa.html “Major congenital malformations and residential proximity to a regional industrial park including a national toxic waste site: An ecological study;”] Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2006, 5:8 ]

The facility has a history of accidents and has been closed down repeatedly. [ Israel Environment Bulletin Winter 1994-5754 [http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1994/INSIDE%20THE%20MINISTRY%20OF%20THE%20ENVIRONMENT%20-%20Jan-94 INSIDE THE MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT: Plans to Relocate Hazardous Waste Site] , Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 2, 1994 Vol. 17, No. 1] [Dalia Tal [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-167535834.html "Explosion at Makhteshim plant in Negev: The blast at the Ramat Hovav facility sent a plume of toxic fumes into the air"] Globes, August 13, 2007] [ Mijal Grinberg [https://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=892903&contrassID=0&subContrassID=0 "Environment minister calls for probe into toxic Negev blast"] Haaretz Archive, 2007] [Tal, Alon. "Pollution in a Promised Land," (University of California Press, 2002) ] [ [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline] Bustan, 2006] In 2007 the head of the Ramat Hovav council, Giora Meyuhas, accused the government corporation that manages the site, the Environmental Services Company, of breaking the law and polluting the environment, and testified that it "deliberately refrains from seeking the long-term management solutions required of the managers of the only hazardous waste site in Israel." [Rinat, Zafrir. [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/936459.html "Ramat Hovav council head: Hazardous waste dump site violates the law;"] "Haaretz" (20/12/2007)] Sarov said that the concentration of so many industries in one place means that if there is a large explosion, not simply local Negev residents but all of Israel and many of its Middle Eastern neighbors will suffer severe contamination akin to that of a nuclear explosion. [ [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline] Bustan, 2006]

History

The facility was built decades after the Israeli government transferred the Al-Azazmeh Bedouin tribe to the area in the 1950s; Ramat Hovav was erected at the edge of Wadi el-Na'am, today a village of more than 5,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel. [ Jennie Mathew: [http://bustan.org/2007/09/wadi_el_naam_in_the_news_bedou.html "Bedouin struggle for land in Negev Desert"] "Haaretz," Sept. 28 2007]

To begin with, the Ramat Hovav toxic waste facility was privately run and underwent no government regulation. [Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land, (University of California Press, 2002)] According to Israeli environmental leader Alon Tal, waste did not undergo any pre-treatment before transport to the site. Storage facilities were weak, barrels often rusted, toxic residues went unlabeled, and reactive materials were stored near containers of cyanide. [Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land, (University of California Press, 2002)]

The area was perceived as invulnerable to leakage; However within a decade, cracks were found in the rock beneath Ramat Hovav. From its inception, the facility developed a history of accidents and closures. Within a year, the Israeli Ministry of Health ordered the closure of the site, and within three, the company went under the management of a government corporation. [Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land, (University of California Press, 2002)] Under government management, the site fared poorly as well. Every few years, Ramat Hovav would catch fire, killing or injuring workers, shepherds, sheep, donkeys or soldiers stationed nearby, and wafting a toxic cloud over the adjacent Bedouin village of Wadi el Na'am, nearby Beer Sheva, and surrounding villages. [ [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline] Bustan, 2006] Every once in a while, regional councils would discover that the evaporation pools of Ramat Hovav's Machteshim chemical factory had overflowed, or that waste was leaking from drainage pipes into their reservoir. Nearly ten years after its establishment, outcrops of the chalk under Ramat Hovav showed fractures potentially leading to serious soil and groundwater contamination in the future. [ Azmon, E. and Offer, Z.Y. [ [http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7v475475107v547/] "Pollution of quaternary cover on aquafers of eocene chalk in Ramat Hovav Industrial Area in Israel"] "Water, Air, & Soil Pollution" Netherlands, Volume 44, Numbers 3-4 / April, 1989]

A decade after cracks emerged in the foundation under Ramat Hovav, al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Israeli companies were engaging in illegal dumping of toxic waste in the West Bank [Javed, Sofia. [http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=3411 illegal dumping "Israel, Palestinians battle over toxic waste,"] "Reuters" (August 31, 1999)] to avoid the cost of treatment and transport to Ramat Hovav. In 1998, while it cost about sixty-five dollars to hire a driver to dump a five-ton truck of waste in the West Bank, to dispose of the same volume at Ramat Hovav cost more than eleven thousand dollars. [Borger, Julian. [http://desip.igc.org/addendum5.html#Middle%20East:%20The%20West%20Bank:%20A%20Dustbin%20for%20Israeli%20Industrial%20Waste? "Palestinians pay price for Israel's toxic waste,"] "Manchester Guardian Weekly" (August 2, 1998)] Around the same time, according to Alon Tal's book "Pollution in a Promised Land," Ramat Hovav reported that only 18-19% of the toxic waste that should be delivered to the site ever arrived. The rest was dumped illegally throughout Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank; a large portion of Israel's toxic waste was (and is to this day) illegally hauled to the Tul Karem dump, atop the regional aquifer serving the central West Bank and Tel Aviv-Triangle area. [Javed, Sofia. [http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=3411 illegal dumping "Israel, Palestinians battle over toxic waste,"] "Reuters" (August 31, 1999)]

When an explosion occurred in tin barrels storing organo-phospheros pesticides in 1997, the 7,000 Negev Arab residents of adjacent villages were not warned and suffered daily danger until they were evacuated (this type of situation has been ongoing, and occurred as recently at 2007.) [Mijal Grinberg and Zafrir Rinat: [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=902890 "Report: Response to Ramat Hovav plant accident inadequate"] Haaretz, 11-09-2007] In 2003, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel filed a suit petitioning the government to provide health services in the village. The same year, the Arab-Jewish environmental justice organization BUSTAN worked with Wadi el-Na'am's local Bedouin leaders to construct a health clinic out of sustainable materials in order to highlight health concerns in the region. A year after clinic construction, after decades of appeals for health services, the government finally built a health clinic on the other side of the village. [ [http://www.bustan.org/healthjustice/sustainablehealthservices/ Wadi Na'am health clinic] ]

Recent developments: Boot Camp City

In 2006, a plan to relocate Tel Aviv army bases and construct a 'Boot Camp City' [ [http://bustan.org/2007/04/haaretz_construction_of_massiv.html Boot Camp City] ] for army professionals and their families was sidelined in favor of expanding Ramat Hovav. [ [http://www.jewishtoronto.org/page.html?ArticleID=106778 UJA-Toronto on Boot Camp City] United Jewish Federation of Toronto, 2007] Ramat Hovav soon began seeking funding from the government for clean-up. [Manski, Rebecca. [http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/bedouin-vilified-among-top-10-environmental-hazards-in-israel-20070418.html"Bedouin Vilified Among Top 10 Environmental Hazards in Israel;"] ("News From Within," Vol. XXII, No. 11, December 2006)] As of March 2008, construction of Boot Camp City began against widespread citizen opposition. [Patricia Golan [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204546395964&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter "Bad Air in Base City"] Jerusalem Post, March 23, 2008] Given the unhealthy conditions at Ramat Hovav, the location of army personnel and their families at the site suggest that Ramat Hovav may not only be a hazardous waste site but a center of strategic military importance; it must be noted that this possibility has not been discussed in the Israeli public arena.

ee also

*Hiriya

References

ources

* Azmon, E. and Offer, Z.Y. "Pollution of quaternary cover on aquafers of eocene chalk in Ramat Hovav Industrial Area in Israel" "Water, Air, & Soil Pollution" Netherlands, Volume 44, Numbers 3-4 / April, 1989
* [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html "A Socio-environmental Timeline"] , Bustan, 2006
* Borger, Julian. "Palestinians pay price for Israel's toxic waste," "Manchester Guardian Weekly" (August 2, 1998)
* Javed, Sofia. "Israel, Palestinians battle over toxic waste," "Reuters" (August 31, 1999)
* Manski, Rebecca. [http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/bedouin-vilified-among-top-10-environmental-hazards-in-israel-20070418.html"Bedouin Vilified Among Top 10 Environmental Hazards in Israel;"] ("News From Within," Vol. XXII, No. 11, December 2006)
* Rinat, Zafrir. "Ramat Hovav council head: Hazardous waste dump site violates the law;" "Haaretz" (20/12/2007)
* Sarov, Batia, and peers at Ben Gurion University: “Major congenital malformations and residential proximity to a regional industrial park including a national toxic waste site: An ecological study;” Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2006, 5:8
* Tal, Alon. "Pollution in a Promised Land," (University of California Press, 2002)

External links

* [http://www.ramat-hovav.muni.il/ Ramat Hovav Industrial Council] he icon
* [http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1998/MONITORING%20OF%20AIRBORNE%20HAZARDOUS%20SUBSTANCES%20IN%20RAM Government information]
* [http://bustan.org/2007/08/a_desert_timeline_the_socioenv.html BUSTAN Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline]
* [http://bustan.org/resources_negev_development/ BUSTAN: Resources on Negev Development]
* [http://bustan.org/resources_health_environment/ BUSTAN: Resources on Negev Health and Environment]
* [http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2058.cfm Clinic construction at Wadi el-Na'am]
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/892903.html Recent explosions]
* [http://bustan.org/2007/08/haaretz_pinespaz_evacuate_rama.html Call for evacuation by Israeli official]
* [http://bustan.org/2007/11/jerusalem_post_nis_186b_suit_e.html Area residents file unprecedented suit against Ramat Hovav]
* [http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArtStEngPE.jhtml?itemNo=860828&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&title='Poor%20chemistry%20'&dyn_server=172.20.5.5 Shifting management/Labor disputes]
* [http://bustan.org/2007/04/haaretz_construction_of_massiv.html About Boot Camp City]