Environment Ministry to close Haifa ammonia storage tank
Decision not to renew permit follows legal wrangling between company and city over potentially hazardous facility
The Environmental Protection Ministry announced on Wednesday it would not renew an ammonia storage tank’s permit to operate in the northern coastal city of Haifa. The facility has been the subject of recent legal wrangling between its operator and the city.
Last week, the Haifa Court for Local Affairs gave the Haifa Group, a fertilizer producer that operates the tank, until February 26 to remove the liquid-form chemical from its tank on the bay. An initial ruling on February 12 had given the company until February 22 to clear out the container.
The ruling was granted to the municipality in the wake of a city-sponsored report that found that the facility posed a serious threat to public health, especially in light of terrorist threats to target it. The report said hundreds of thousands of people would be killed if a ship that delivers ammonia to the facility were to rupture.
After initially signaling that it would abide by the ruling, the company filed an appeal, slamming the Haifa municipality as “demagogues” trying to “sow fear among the public.”
On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) said he would not renew the Haifa Group’s permit to operate the ammonia storage facility, apparently indicating the tank would be closed.
Elkin said in a statement that he reached his decision “in light of the fact that there is no solution on the horizon” and because “the [ammonia] tank places the public and the environment in danger, which we cannot abide.”
He also criticized the Haifa Group for failing to pursue alternatives, such his predecessor Avi Gabbai’s recommendation that the facility be relocated to the southern Negev desert.
Elkin said that in light of concerns regarding the financial impact of the facility’s closure the Environmental Protection Ministry would grant “a period of three months for the Economy Ministry [to make] arrangements for alternative sources of ammonia purchases.” The Economy Ministry on Monday requested a three-month stay on carrying out the ruling in order to review the potential harm to industry in the area.
In its arguments against closing the facility, the Haifa Group said that emptying the ammonia storage tank would “eliminate the operations of whole industrial sectors,” and deal a serious blow to the local economy. Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said such arguments are an attempt to threaten the city and its residents in a Facebook post earlier this month.
MK Amir Peretz (Zionist Union), who previously served as environmental protection minister, said in a statement that while Elkin’s decision was “the right choice,” “it is sad that only a court order [could] cause the Netanyahu government to fulfill its obligations to the citizens, care for their well being and protect the public from a disaster.”
The Haifa municipality submitted its petition for the closure of the ammonium facility following the publication last month of a report it commissioned that found the port city’s ammonia operations posed a serious risk to the population.
The report was also submitted to the High Court of Justice as part of a legal dispute between Haifa Group and the municipality.
If ruptured, the vast ammonia storage tank would suffocate 16,000 victims under a toxic cloud, the report said. The tank could “fall apart tomorrow morning,” the report’s author, chemistry professor Ehud Keinan, said at a press conference to release the report on January 31, held at the municipality.
But an even worse danger, the report said, is posed by a delivery ship that arrives at the Haifa container once a month. If its cargo of ammonia were released to the air, it could kill as many as 600,000 people in the bay area, according to the report.
Last year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened to target Haifa’s ammonia facilities with rockets in the next conflict with Israel. He quoted an unnamed Israeli official saying that a strike on the northern city’s ammonia storage tanks would cause tens of thousands of fatalities.
In a speech last week, Nasrallah claimed credit for the court decision to shut down the ammonia storage tank, while also calling on Israel to dismantle the Dimona nuclear facility, which he threatened the Lebanese Shiite terror group would strike in a future conflict with the Jewish state.
Raoul Wootliff contributed to this report.
