Monday, July 2

Shafdan Found Guilty

Last week, the "Shafdan" company was found guilty by the peace court of having seriously damaged Israel's marine environment some years ago.
They were fined 800.000 NIS, which is quite a pathetic joke, considering the extent of the damage done.
The Shafdan company is responsible for the waste water management in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. For many years, they did not bother to maintain Jaffa's rather ancient sewage pipe system, until, one hot summer day, the main pipe basically exploded. A 10 meter high pressure shit fountain was the result. Houses were flooded, cars swept away and the smell...
No words can describe it.
As repair was going to be a time-consuming business, they decided to simply chuck the metropolitan raw sewage directly into the the sea for a period of approximately 2 months. No swimming, no fishing, no beach and yes, the smell, that too.
Fishermen went broke, kids were frustrated and nobody asked the fish and other marine creatures what they felt about their environment.
The lovely azure water close to the beach looked sort of brownish for months.

The shafdan constructed an huge monster of an elevated sewage pipe in Jaffa, adorning our main boulevard for about a year, while laying a new permanent pipe system.

Sewage pipes don't simply crash one day, they crash when they are not properly maintained in an ongoing regular manner. But that was beyond the Shafdan management 's considerations, who, by the way, make huge salaries.
Irresponsible? Unprofessional? Insensitive? All of those, but, as the court decided, foremost criminal.

Zalul

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A verdict like in The Metamorphosis
written by Franz M.Katzav.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the Zalul link. It's an excellent website and an eye opener...!

Tamar Orvell said...

Terrific. Kol hakavod. You write in the spirit of sinclair lewis and all ethical muckrakers. Thanks for keeping this horror in the news.

Lirun said...

allow me to explain.. peace court in israel is what we call local courts..