Nature authority to remove 30,000 cubic meters of oil-soaked soil at southern reserve
Move follows years of post-spill research and failure of other methods to draw out crude oil that flooded out of broken pipe into Evrona Nature Reserve near Eilat in 2014
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
At first glance, the ground at Evrona Nature Reserve, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of Eilat, in southern Israel, looks a more or less uniform sandy beige.
But kick away the thin gravel and sand brought in by flash floods along some of the seasonal water courses, and dark brown is revealed.
Dr. Nitzan Segev, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority’s ecologist for the vast area stretching from the Dead Sea to Eilat, likes to drip water onto the soil to illustrate the problem. The water remains on top in a greasy puddle, because the soil is contaminated with crude oil.
The scant rainfall in this area (on average 25 millimeters per year, or just under an inch) cannot percolate. The result is that few plants can germinate.
Having piloted multiple methods for cleaning up the soil, to no acceptable avail, the authority has decided to remove around 30,000 cubic meters (10,600 tons) of it this summer, once permits have been signed and the threat of rain and flash floods has passed.
It will be funded from part of the NIS 100 million (then worth $28 million) cash that the company responsible for the contamination, the Europe Asia Pipeline Company, agreed to pay in damages in 2019 to settle a class action suit.
The 2014 spill, and the one before it
Evrona is home to some 250 gazelles along with acacia trees and perennial shrubs unique to the hyper-arid desert. It is also an important stop for migrating birds.
On December 3, 2014, some 5 million liters (1.32 million US gallons) of crude oil poured out of a pipe owned by the Europe Asia Pipeline Company into the reserve, contaminating 145 dunams (36 acres) of seasonal water channels. The pipe broke at the entrance to nearby Kibbutz Be’er Ora, during work being carried out to relocate infrastructure prior to the building of Ramon Airport.
During the desperate initial attempts to remove as much of the liquid oil as possible, an INPA inspector on a vehicle that was digging a pit to collect some of the crude discovered evidence of an earlier leak. This was examined and traced to 1975, when the same pipe ruptured, at a different point, sending 8,000 to 10,000 cubic meters (2.1 million to 2.6 million US gallons) flooding into and contaminating around 1,500 dunams (370 acres) of water channels. No remediation was carried out at the time.
HaMaarag — the national ecosystem assessment program — carried out a five-year monitoring program at Evrona from 2016. It launched a second five-year monitoring program last year.
Among the conclusions of research on both the 1975 and the 2014 spill areas were not only that oil was still present to varying depths, but that while older acacia trees with deep root systems had managed to survive, there were hardly any younger trees, indicating problems with germination and seedling development.
Acacia trees are a so-called keystone species, on which multiple plants, animals and microorganisms rely. These include the gazelles, which obtain food and water mainly from acacia leaves in the summer.
The loss of acacia trees, according to an article published in 2017 in the Journal of Environmental Quality, could lead to “cascading effects for the entire food web” causing “a drastic loss of biodiversity.”
‘Give renewal a chance’
Various cleanup approaches were tested on pilot plots in the reserve. One was eventually chosen that used bacteria to break down the oil with a 70% pilot success rate. However, when applied to almost the whole area contaminated in 2014, average remediation rates only reached 30-50%, according to INPA’s Segev.
Soil removal was initially avoided because of fear of altering the delicate gradients along which water flows to plants, or harming the seed bank, Segev explained.
Now, though, this summer’s scheduled removal of some 30,000 cubic meters (10,600 tons) has been deemed the least problematic option.
“People worried that big digging machines would harm the gradients, and that small ones would need to spend a long time working and would bother the gazelles,” said Segev.
“But after all the monitoring (with many researchers on site), we see that the gazelles haven’t fled, which was the greatest fear, and we think the benefits (of soil removal) will outweigh the damage. Nothing is growing there, seeds aren’t germinating, so best to remove the soil and give a renewal a chance.”
