Environmental group to appeal state decision to not charge Dea Sea companies

15 November 2021, 3:58 pm

Edit

Hikers walk next to sinkholes across a dried-up sea area which exposed and created a salt plain, some 20 kilometers south of Kibbutz Ein Gedi in the southern part of the Dead Sea, on January 15, 2021. (Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

A leading environmental group says it will petition against the companies operating at the Dead Sea as well as the Tax Authority after the authority said it will wipe out a NIS 65 million debt it earlier said was owed to the state.

Adam Teva V’Din says the Tax Authority’s decision is illegal. “This decision is significant to every one of us, because the payment would have lowered the price of water,” said the organization’s CEO Amit Bracha.

A Tax Authority official says that the reasons for the decision will remain confidential. An earlier TV report indicated that the Justice Ministry feared that it could lose a legal battle against the Dead Sea Works company in court. The company claims that it did not have to pay anything beyond the original deal its parent company, Israel Chemicals (ICL), signed in the 1960s.