UPDATE - Israeli divers trained in poisoned waters - inquiry
Date: 27-Jul-01
Country: ISRAEL
Author: Michael Carney
The panel, investigating cancer rates among former navy divers, said the military knew of potentially dangerous chemicals in the polluted Kishon River as early as the 1950s.
But the navy continued to train frogmen in the oily, fetid waterway through the 1990s, even though river officials have described it as "an open sewage canal".
"The system failed twice," Yoram Aviram, attorney for some of the divers, told Israel Radio. "Once when it sent the fighters to dive in the Kishon and exposed them to carcinogens, and a second time when it avoided taking responsibility."
The three-person panel urged the navy to cease immediately all diving operations in the Kishon and called on civilian authorities to prevent illegal dumping of sewage and industrial waste in the river.
The Israeli army initiated the review last year.
It said in a statement that in light of the report, Israeli naval forces would cease activities related to diving, swimming and sailing light vessels pending a study of pollution levels for the country's rivers and seashores.
The panel, led by Meir Shamgar, the former president of Israel's Supreme Court, will now move on the next stage of its review and examine whether river pollution actually caused dozens of navy divers to develop cancer.
They expect to produce a second report, based on medical tests currently being conducted on the divers, within several months.
More than 4,000 people have trained in the river, spending 200-300 hours a year in the water, according to the daily Ha'aretz newspaper.
Some of those who have developed cancer are now seeking compensation from the government.
"OPEN SEWAGE CANAL"
The review showed that in the 1990s senior navy officers skirted a ban on using the river by citing a need to train in "emergency situations" with pollution levels similar to those found in potentially hostile ports.
Such policies, the report concluded, were akin to the army simulating combat by shooting at soldiers during basic training.
"I was aware of the uncleanliness of the water, but I was not aware it was affecting the fighters' health," Uzi Livnat, a reserve colonel who headed the commando unit, told Army Radio.
A 1999 report on river pollution by the Israeli environmental group, Adam Teva Ve Din, cited the 63-km (39-mile) Kishon as "one of the most stricken and polluted rivers in Israel".
The Kishon River Authority described it as an "open sewage canal" - a waterway filled with industrial chemicals and municipal sewage as it approaches the Israeli port of Haifa.
Another polluted river, the Yarkon, led to the deaths in 1997 of two Australian athletes after a bridge collapsed during opening ceremonies in Tel Aviv for the "Jewish Olympics". They died of infections caused by pollutants in the water. Two other Australians died from the collapse.
The entire region has been exempt from government environmental regulations since the 1930s. In 2000, more than 32,000 cubic metres of waste-water flowed into the Kishon daily.
"In the 70s and 80s we unequivocally were not aware that there were carcinogens in the Kishon River, in the mouth of the Kishon or in the Haifa port," Yehuda Melamed, a former medical chief in the navy, told Israel Radio.
"I don't remember a lot of complaints and I myself dived a lot in this water," Melamed added.
