Experts believe Gaza sewage forced shutdown of five ‘Israeli’ desalination plants

Five of ‘Israel’s’ six desalination plants temporarily shut down this week after a massive microalgae bloom clogged intake pipes along the Mediterranean coast, cutting a large share of their desalinated water production.

The bloom, described by officials as extremely rare, stretched for miles and was linked to high seawater turbidity, elevated temperatures above 30°C (86°F), and a recent sea storm.

It originated off Egypt’s Nile Delta and drifted northward on currents, according to researchers at ‘Israel’ Oceanographic and Limnological Research.

Alon Zask, the institute’s director general, said microalgae from the Nile region were carried to ‘Israel’s’ coast and called the intensity “unprecedented,” noting he had never seen a bloom of this scale along the ‘Israeli’ shore.

Experts, according to Haaretz, have pointed to untreated sewage from Gaza as a contributing factor that likely intensified the growth.

All six of Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants were damaged or destroyed during the war, leading to roughly 40,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater discharged daily into the sea, plus additional leakage into the ground, according to Palestinian authorities and UNICEF reports.

Noga Armi, chief executive of the ‘Israeli’ environmental group Zalul, stated: “The scientific link is well established. Untreated sewage discharged into the sea from Gaza was one of the factors that contributed to the incident,” as the nutrients feed microalgal blooms.

Haaretz described the episode as “sewage backfire,” arguing that ‘Israel’ is paying the price for the destruction of Gaza’s sanitation system and the failure to allow its reconstruction.

Environmental groups including EcoPeace Middle East have long warned of the risks.

Gidon Bromberg, EcoPeace’s ‘Israel’ director, said full cooperation is required from the ‘Israeli’ government, the Board of Peace, and Palestinian authorities “to urgently repair Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants, in order to protect—among other things—Israel’s own water security.”

Desalination normally supplies a majority of ‘Israel’s’ drinking water (estimates range from about 65 percent upward).

The affected plants included Ashkelon, Ashdod, Palmachim, Sorek A, and Sorek B; only the Hadera facility continued operating normally throughout much of the disruption.

Authorities responded by increasing pumping from the Sea of Galilee and aquifers, activating emergency wells, and drawing on reserves.

Local restrictions limited irrigation of public gardens and agricultural fields, and Mekorot temporarily halted pipeline water supplies to Gaza during the peak of the outage.

Lior Gutman, a Mekorot spokesperson, called it “an extremely rare event” that had never occurred before in ‘Israel’, while stressing that drinking-water shortages were avoided in roughly 99 percent of cases.

Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen described it as “a natural phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen in the past 30 years” and said the system had compensated by boosting alternative sources.

By Friday, the Water Authority and Energy Ministry declared the water sector “fully stable.”

Supply to households and agriculture continued without restrictions through a mix of partial desalination operations, increased flows from the Sea of Galilee, and hundreds of wells.

Ashkelon and Ashdod remained offline, while other plants operated partially or were ramping up, and national reservoirs were being refilled over the weekend.

Officials emphasized that drinking water remained completely safe.