State owned pipeline, former executives, convicted over Zin Stream pollution
Environmental Protection Ministry, which brought criminal case, and environmental organizations, welcome judgment and imposition of personal responsibility on senior staff
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
A Beersheba court on Tuesday convicted the Europe Asia Pipeline Company and several former senior employees, including the director-general, of polluting the Zin stream in southern Israel on two separate occasions in 2011.
Just hours after the judgment was published, the Environmental Protection Ministry announced that it had traced reports of foul smells to a leak of around 20,000 liters (5,285 gallons) of fuel at EAPC’s depot in Ashkelon on the southern coast.
The state-owned company, formerly called the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline company, has been under scrutiny over its environmental record amid a push for a deal to transport more oil from the UAE overland between the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The company has already been blamed for massive contamination of the Evrona Nature Reserve and Arava Desert in 2014, called the worst spill in Israel’s history, and subsequently agreed to pay NIS 100 million ($28 million) in damages for that event.
The court said Tuesday the EAPC was guilty of two counts of aggravated water pollution in aggravated circumstances, two counts of dumping hazardous waste in the public domain and one count of causing a strong or unreasonable odor.
Yair Vida, the former director-general, Shlomo Levy, then Deputy Director for Engineering, and Nir Savion, then-head of the pipe repair project at the center of the case, were convicted on two counts of water pollution in aggravated circumstances and two counts of failing to supervise and prevent offenses against the law.
The leaks badly damaged the Zin Stream, a seasonal river that runs 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Ramon Crater to the Sodom plain, then into the southern end of the Dead Sea, over some of the country’s most rugged terrain.
The first of the two leaks took place during maintenance work on a pipe in June 2011 while a worker was trying to dig up a tree for relocation and hit the pipe, causing 722 cubic meters (190 gallons) of jet fuel to spew out and contaminate an area of 60 dunams (15 acres) within and around the Zin Stream for more than five hours.
Around 100 cubic meters (26 gallons) of kerosene were pumped out in an emergency operation and 26,500 tons of polluted soil were subsequently removed. But, according to the judge, Sarah Haviv, the stream, and its banks remained contaminated in a way that endangered the aquifer beneath the stream as well as water drilling some 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away. The event damaged flora and fauna and left a noxious smell for several months.
According to the judgment, the EAPC failed to ensure compliance with technical specifications and the details of a work order it had written itself. Furthermore, it was ill-prepared for a leak. Vida was insufficiently involved in supervising the project.
The Environmental Protection Ministry issued a stop-work order, only allowing the resumption of works on July 27 that year, subject to various conditions, including one that the pipe be buried under a meter (just over three feet) of soil once maintenance had been carried out.
Despite this, on September 4, 2011, workers involved in burying a section of pipe just south of the Zin Stream covered it with just 37 centimeters (14.5 inches) of dirt. While restoring an adjacent path, the teeth of the digger’s bucket punched two holes into the pipe, which sent several hundred more million cubic meters of kerosene into the streambed.
Attempts to stop the flow were hampered by the fact that workers had left the valve key in an office.
The workers violated regulations as well as the terms of work submitted by EAPC to the Environmental Protection Ministry, the judgment said.
Once again, according to the judge, the company was not properly prepared for an emergency.
EAPC declined to comment when asked by The Times of Israel.
The Environmental Protection Ministry said it welcomed the outcome of the criminal case, which was brought by its enforcement arm.
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel said it hoped the judgment would be “another step on the way to stopping the polluting activities of the EAPC.”
Amit Bracha, head of the Adam Teva V’Din environmental justice group, said it was important that executives be punished for the company’s “irresponsible activity and its blatant disregard for the environment and its importance for human life.”
He accused EAPC of continuing to pollute, but expressed hope the lawsuit would “make waves” at the EAPC as well as at other companies that “also pollute the environment daily while endangering the health of people and animals.”
SPNI, Adam Teva V’Din, and the marine conservation organization, Zalul, submitted a petition to the High Court last May to cancel a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the EAPC and a consortium of Israeli and United Arab Emirates business people to channel crude oil from the Gulf through EAPC’s ports and pipelines, from Eilat on the Red Sea to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean.
They withdrew the petition in December after the State Attorney’s office told the High Court that, from the Justice Ministry’s point of view, the Environmental Protection Ministry had full authority to act against the EAPC.
The Environmental Protection Ministry strenuously opposes the deal, partly because of the risk to nearby corals of global importance, and in September limited the number of Gulf tankers that can dock annually in Eilat to a maximum of six, while the company seeks a green light for 30.
Alleged pollution of the Zin Stream by an ICL phosphate mining company, Rotem Amfert Negev Ltd., is currently the subject of a separate class-action suit.
