The National Water Carrier of Israel (Hebrew: המוביל הארצי, HaMovil HaArtzi) is the largest water project in Israel, completed in 1964. Its main purpose is to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee in the north of the country to the highly populated center and the arid south and to enable efficient use of water and regulation of the water supply in the country. It is about 130 kilometers (81 mi) long. Up to 72,000 cubic meters (19,000,000 U.S. gal; 16,000,000 imp gal) of water can flow through the carrier each hour, totalling 1.7 million cubic meters in a day. The carrier consists of a system of giant pipes, open canals, tunnels, reservoirs and large scale pumping stations. Building the carrier was a considerable technical challenge as it traverses a wide variety of terrain and elevations. Most of the water works in Israel are integrated with the National Water Carrier.
History
Planning and construction While preliminary plans were made before the establishment of the State of Israel, detailed planning began after Israeli independence in 1948. The construction of the project, originally known as the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, started in 1953, during the planning phase, long before the detailed final plan was completed in 1956. The project was designed by Tahal and constructed by Mekorot. It was inaugurated during the tenure of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and completed in June 1964 under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, at a cost of about 420 million Israeli lira (at 1964 values).
Agriculture, drinking water, Jordan's share (1964-1990s) The National Water Carrier was inaugurated in 1964, with 80% of its water being allocated to agriculture and 20% for drinking water. As time passed, increasing amounts were consumed as drinking water, and by the early 1990s, the National Carrier was supplying half of the drinking water in Israel. It was forecast that by 2010, 80% of the output would be used for drinking water for two reasons: rapid population growth, primarily in the center of the country, and higher living standards.Under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, Israel agreed to transfer 50 million cubic metres of water annually to Jordan.
Since 2015 (after large-scale desalination) As of 2016, water from the Sea of Galilee was supplying approximately 10% of Israel's drinking water needs. In the previous years, the Israeli government had undertaken extensive investments in water reclamation and desalination infrastructure in the country, while promoting water conservation. This has lessened the country's reliance on the National Water Carrier and has allowed it to significantly reduce the amount of water pumped from the Sea of Galilee in an effort to restore and improve the lake's ecological environment, especially in face of severe droughts affecting the lake's intake basin in previous years. It was expected that in 2016 only about 25,000,000 cubic metres (880,000,000 cu ft) of water would be drawn from the lake for Israeli domestic water consumption, down from more than 300,000,000 cubic metres (1.1×1010 cu ft) pumped annually a decade earlier.
Route
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