As Haifa goes green, oil refinery closure delayed but crude oil tanks set for removal
Plan for the bay’s polluting heavy industry to be replaced with green spaces, housing and commercial areas are behind schedule, but project heads say it will be completed on time
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The closure of the polluting Bazan oil refineries in the northern city of Haifa will take slightly longer than expected, but the removal of foul-smelling crude oil tanks that back onto homes in the nearby neighborhood of Kiryat Haim will begin this year, according to an update on the state’s massive plan to rehabilitate the city’s sprawling industrial quarter and turn it into a green metropolis that rivals Tel Aviv.
Residents and non-governmental groups have long campaigned for the bay’s heavy industries to be shuttered in light of studies suggesting a link between pollution in the Haifa Bay area and cancer as well as infant disorders such as smaller-than-average heads and relatively low weight.
Three years ago, the cabinet decided to shut down the refineries and its oil storage complex within a decade. A Directorate for the Development of Haifa Bay was created within the Prime Minister’s Office. It designed a work plan through 2030 comprising 101 packages of tasks with schedules and deadlines. Earlier this month, it reported on activities in 2024.
The vision is to transform the bay over the next 20 years into a sustainable area of residential neighborhoods, commerce and employment, clean industry, tourism, and open space. It will remain home to the country’s largest cargo port, two smaller seaports, and a small airport.
But progress depends on the closure of Bazan, and that cannot happen until new infrastructure has been built to import, transport, and store the distillates that the oil refinery produces, ranging from bitumen for road surfaces to waxes, oils, lubricants, and polymers.
According to the directorate’s report, work on 33 out of 52 goals did not finish on schedule last year, causing delays of a few months, which is why the closure of Bazan has been pushed off for six months to the first half of 2030.
Yuval Admon, the directorate’s head, told The Times of Israel that staff still intend to meet the original deadlines. The organization has set an aggressive timetable, but working with government and planning authorities has taken time, he added. Funding, he said, was not a factor in the delays.
Negotiations with Bazan, ICL (which operates a fertilizer plant), and Israel Infrastructures, which owns the oil tank farm near Kiryat Haim, are continuing, the report said, with an agreement on the initial removal of nine oil tanks by 2028, starting this year. (Some tanks will only be removed once Bazan has closed).
Today, the Haifa bay is characterized by a mix of low-tech factories, warehouses, workshops, decrepit buildings, and weed-filled wasteland. Plans are to attract clean industry and business and create some 560,000 new jobs. To this end, the Economy Ministry and the National Economic Council, together with the consulting firm KPMG, have completed a plan to attract more companies, which will be published once it is approved.
A project director has been appointed for a large hi-tech complex envisioned on the banks of the Saadia Stream, and a pumping station has been built there to keep pollutants out of the water.
A park twice the size of Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park
Planning continues for a large metropolitan park, almost twice the size of Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, which will run alongside the Kishon River and incorporate several tributaries.
At the eastern extreme, the city of Nesher is creating a 500-dunam (123-acre) park around one of many quarries left by the Nesher cement factory. There, groundwater changes have resulted in the formation of two lakes — one freshwater, one salty. These have become wildlife havens. Together with the state Fund for the Restoration of Quarries, the city will soon start building the parks, with a 5,000-seat amphitheater, cycling paths, sports facilities, restaurants, and stores. The project will take two years to build.
On the western edge of the metropolitan park, close to where the Kishon River drains into the sea, infrastructure works on a saltwater marsh have been completed. There, the Kishon River Authority has carried out ecological restoration of previously contaminated sludge ponds, transforming them into the biggest coastal salt marsh in Israel. Accessible hiking trails have been paved. Plans include birdwatching stations and pedestrian bridges linking the islands.
A wild daffodil park will form part of the marsh on the southern bank of the river.
