"New terminal, old sewage"

Sunday, October 31, 2004

New terminal, old sewage
By Zafrir Rinat 
Israel - Haaretz


The new passenger terminal at Ben-Gurion International Airport was
inaugurated last week in a lavish ceremony. The terminal is another in a
series of national projects, which include roads, rail lines and facilities
to produce energy, with which the government has been pushing ahead in
recent years. 

The opening of the new terminal is certainly good news for millions of
passengers, who will at long last be able to enjoy a modern, spacious
facility instead of having to cope with large crowds in small spaces. It is
also a fitting opportunity to examine this project and other infrastructure
plans from the environmental point of view. Such an examination refers above
all to the attitude toward the environment of those who build the
facilities. In short order, it becomes clear that, while large investments
are being made in prestigious, state-of-the-art projects, the most basic
environmental problems are left unsolved.

Thus, no advanced waste purification facility has been built for the new
terminal, with the result being that it will pollute the environment. The
Environment Ministry tried to make the opening of the terminal conditional
on the construction of such a facility, but was rebuffed by the
Transportation Ministry and the Airports Authority on the grounds that the
facility was not made a requirement in the terminal's master plan. In the
end, the Justice Ministry decided that the terminal would be opened and the
purification facility would be built as quickly as possible.

The Israel Ports and Railway Authority spent billions of shekels on new
track in metropolitan Tel Aviv and on the Modi'in and Jerusalem routes, but
it did not take the trouble to ensure the proper disposal of the large
amount of landfill generated by the projects. The authority's contractors
simply dumped the refuse without authorization as cheaply and as
conveniently - for them - as possible.

Another aspect of the environmental dimension is the unrelenting pressure
applied by the government to abridge planning processes of national
infrastructure projects, accompanied by unceasing accusations that the
greens are sabotaging and delaying the projects without any real
justification. This is one of the arguments that was cited by the government
to establish a national infrastructures committee that bypasses regular
planning procedures and shortens the process of obtaining approval for
plans, while significantly diminishing the public's ability to raise
objections.

With great effrontery, the Interior Ministry's planning directorate joined
in the chorus of allegations of unnecessary delay. The directorate had
vehemently opposed the establishment of the national infrastructures
committee, but now its officials are pleased to have another bureaucratic
body under their control. This month they accused the greens of being the
cause of the committee's establishment - the greens having ostensibly
accumulated much power in the planning commissions and brought about delays
in projects based on a narrow and irresponsible perspective, to the point
where national growth and quality of life were being adversely affected.

The case of the new terminal is only one example of the fact that the greens
are not the delaying factor in these large-scale projects. They waged a
struggle against the location of the new terminal, arguing that it would
harm the quality of life of the local residents. But it was economic
difficulties and labor disputes that brought about a significant delay in
the project's completion (the terminal is opening four years later than
planned).

Another example is the widening of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway in the
area of Sha'ar Hagai. In this case, the greens were victorious in a legal
battle against the Ma'atz public works authority. The court ruled that a
detailed plan had to be drawn up for the project. The entire blame lies with
Ma'atz, which insisted on trying to abridge the procedures. Had it followed
the regular path of all the procedures involved in getting authorization to
widen the road, the project might well have been completed by now.

Orderly planning procedures, in which public opposition is taken into
account along with consideration for environmental aspects of a project, are
basic obligations of democratic governments. Those who ignore them must be
held accountable, not the green groups, whose task is to review plans, raise
doubts and make every effort to protect nature and ensure the public's
health. The task of government ministries is not to criticize green groups
but to engage them in a substantive dialogue. It is not their task to
abridge procedures and move immediately to the hasty and hazard-ridden
implementation of projects, but to plan efficiently and thoroughly and to
give thought to the project's surroundings, too.


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