Tuesday, April 15, 2008

"Australia should learn from Israeli desalination"

A Melbourne University scientist says Australia could learn a lot about water efficiency from Israel.

Ray Ison traveled to Israel with a delegation of Australian farmers, conservationists and government officials, paid for by the Jewish National Fund.

While he says there are some environmental problems with water from the country's desalination plants, Professor Ison says much of Israel's agriculture depends on irrigating desert land, and most of that water is recycled.

"Much of the water comes from recycled urban use," he said.

"Some of it comes from several processes in agriculture, so you may have fish farming, followed by algal production, or bio-proteins and other things in water, it might go onto plants, so they maximise every drop of water in the integrated production systems."

Source: ABC Rural