ISRAEL: Oil spill threatens precious nature preserve
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:11 amOil spill in Israel’s Evrona Nature Reserve is disastrous news for a precious resource (PHOTO)
[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/isr ... story.html ]
By William Booth December 17 at 1:14 PM
BEER ORA, Israel — Crews swaddled in white biohazard suits have been dunking nozzles into streams of oil, racing to soak up the ooze seeping into the desert valley floor here, two weeks after a major spill threatened one of Israel’s most precious habitats.
Officials are calling it the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history — a literal blot on a landscape that harbors some of the hardiest known plants and animals, which live in an impossibly difficult environment.
The spill is bad news for the brown babbler, the Balochistan gerbil and the striped hyena, all denizens of the acacia savanna, which is already stressed, having to make do with an inch or so of rain a year and daytime summer temperatures that average 104 degrees.
On Dec. 4, a pipeline that carries oil between Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba and Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Sea burst. The company that operates the pipeline says it does not know what caused the breach. The Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry’s “Green Police” are investigating. [ http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.631760 ]
Five million liters — about 1.3 million gallons — gushed from the buried pipe, bubbled up to the surface and crossed Highway 90 like a black river at high flood.
The oil then snaked in hundreds of rivulets across the Evrona Nature Reserve, slowly flowing downhill through the dry wadis and streambeds into the very heart of the preserve.
Photographs taken from drones and helicopters show dark capillaries on yellow sand. And at the center of it all are the acacia trees, the keystone species giving life to everything else in this unfriendly terrain.
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[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/isr ... story.html ]
[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/isr ... story.html ]
By William Booth December 17 at 1:14 PM
BEER ORA, Israel — Crews swaddled in white biohazard suits have been dunking nozzles into streams of oil, racing to soak up the ooze seeping into the desert valley floor here, two weeks after a major spill threatened one of Israel’s most precious habitats.
Officials are calling it the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history — a literal blot on a landscape that harbors some of the hardiest known plants and animals, which live in an impossibly difficult environment.
The spill is bad news for the brown babbler, the Balochistan gerbil and the striped hyena, all denizens of the acacia savanna, which is already stressed, having to make do with an inch or so of rain a year and daytime summer temperatures that average 104 degrees.
On Dec. 4, a pipeline that carries oil between Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba and Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Sea burst. The company that operates the pipeline says it does not know what caused the breach. The Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry’s “Green Police” are investigating. [ http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.631760 ]
Five million liters — about 1.3 million gallons — gushed from the buried pipe, bubbled up to the surface and crossed Highway 90 like a black river at high flood.
The oil then snaked in hundreds of rivulets across the Evrona Nature Reserve, slowly flowing downhill through the dry wadis and streambeds into the very heart of the preserve.
Photographs taken from drones and helicopters show dark capillaries on yellow sand. And at the center of it all are the acacia trees, the keystone species giving life to everything else in this unfriendly terrain.
MORE:
[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/isr ... story.html ]