Tel Aviv — The Israeli government’s committee on national infrastructures has decided to grant Dead Sea Works a delay in harvesting the salt at the Dead Sea. The company was supposed to carry out an immediate project to remove salt as an intermediate step before the large scale project for harvesting salt begins. The committee said that the Dead Sea Works and its parent company, Israel Chemicals (ICL), are moving ahead rapidly on the full scale program and therefore it agreed to forgo the immediate harvesting. However the committee decision did not take into account a legal challenge against the agreement between the government and ICL by the country’s leading environmental lobby, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED). The IUED is demanding that the agreement with ICL on the salt harvesting be amended charging that it is not in the public interest. The lobby charged the government with "once again giving into one of the country’s most powerful companies at the expense of the public." The IUED demanded that salt harvesting begin immediately to halt continued damage to the environment. Israel’s Supreme Court is due to hear the appeal in the coming weeks. In January the Israeli government approved the agreement with ICL whereby the company would cover 80 percent of the cost of removing the salt from the ponds it uses for potash production at the southern end of the Dead Sea. The government would cover the remainder of the cost which is estimated at $1.1 billion. The removal of the salt is crucial in order to stem the rise of the level of the southern end of the Dead Sea, which threatens hotels located adjacent to the inland sea. Half of the government payment will be offset by indirect payments by the company and raising royalties from 5 to 10 percent on production above 1.5 million tons.
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