Israel Reports on Water Desalination Progress at Washington Parley

Israel’s nuclear plant for water desalination will, under present plans, be operational at full capacity by April 1972, it was reported here today at the opening session of the First International Symposium on Water Desalination. The report, surveying desalination progress in Israel, was presented by I. Vilentchuk, of the Israeli Seawater Conversion Commission.

Taking into account that only relatively small conversion units have hitherto been erected elsewhere, the Israeli desalination commission considers the erection of an intermediate size prototype unit as “extremely important, “Mr. Vilentchuk said. Reviewing salinity developments in Israel, he reported that in the early 1970’s salinity problems will become acute and an improvement in the mineral quality of the irrigation water will be necessary to present a possibly significant drop in crop yields of the citrus plantations.

American desalination authorities today revealed that the site for the nuclear desalting plant to be erected in Israel will be in the vicinity of Arad, a town near Beersheba.

The State Department issued a statement declaring that it did not bow to pressure in not naming an Israeli to chair at least one of the panels of the Desalination Symposium, “There is no basis whatever for these allegations,” the statement said. “The Desalination Symposium is a technical conference designed primarily to provide a forum for the exchange of information among scientists and technicians.

“Representatives of certain countries have been invited to read papers before different panels. In order to encourage the fullest possible participation by delegates attending the symposium, certain representatives of countries not presenting as many papers as other nations have been invited to serve as chairmen of the various panels,” the statement declared. “The United States has always deplored and sought to prevent the injection of political issues into scientific and technical conferences. It would have been entirely inconsistent with established policy for the United States Government to have complied with such pressures had they been made.”