Ne'ot Hovav

Israel municipality Ramat Hovav ( ) is an industrial municipality in southern Israel , as well as Israel's main hazardous waste disposal facility, built in the Negev Desert in 1979. The nearest village is the largest unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, Wadi el-Na'am , directly adjacent, and the nearest city is the regional population center of Beersheba , 12 kilometers away. In addition to housing the National Site for Treatment of Hazardous Waste (the only approved center for hazardous waste in the country) the Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone is the locus of 19 chemical factories, concentrating over half of Israel’s chemical plants on its 6,000 acres (24 km ). Nine of these chemical factories (most notably Makhteshim Agan which is the seventh largest pesticide company in the world and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the largest drug-producer in the world) deal directly with hazardous materials and utilize over 1,000 acres (4.0 km ) of evaporation ponds which pollute the air and leach cancer-causing chemicals into the soil and water. As of 2008, construction began on an army base south of Ramat Hovav for career soldiers and their families, against widespread opposition (see below). On August 28th, 2006, Ben Gurion University epidemiologist Batya Sarov, formerly a specialist at Chernobyl , told the Negev environmental justice organization BUSTAN : "The environmental monitoring at Chernobyl was better, and the health risks no more severe, than at Ramat Hovav." The findings of a 2004 study commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Health pointed to high rates of birth defects among children in surrounding villages and cities. The facility has a history of accidents and has been closed down repeatedly. In 2007 the head of the Ramat Hovav council, Giora Meyuhas, accused the government corporation that manages the site, the Environmental Services Company, of breaking the law and polluting the environment, and testified that it "deliberately refrains from seeking the long-term management solutions required of the managers of the only hazardous waste site in Israel." Sarov said that the concentration of so many industries in one place means that if there is a large explosion, not simply local Negev residents but all of Israel and many of its Middle Eastern neighbors will suffer severe contamination akin to that of a nuclear explosion. The facility is accessed from Highway 40 and would eventually also be reachable via Highway 6 which is planned to be extended to the area. Much of the hazardous waste transported to the site from the rest of the country reaches it via an Israel Railways rail line (a spur off of the main line to Beersheba ) which terminates at a rail terminal located inside the facility. Negev Bar Kayma Naqab Desert Socio-Environmental Timeline Bustan, 2006 Sarov, Batia, and peers at Ben Gurion University: “Major congenital malformations and residential proximity to a regional industrial park including a national toxic waste site: An ecological study;” Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2006, 5:8 Israel Environment Bulletin Winter 1994-5754 INSIDE THE MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT: Plans to Relocate Hazardous Waste Site , Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 2, 1994 Vol. 17, No. 1 Dalia Tal "Explosion at Makhteshim plant in Negev: The blast at the Ramat Hovav facility sent a plume of toxic fumes into the air" Globes, August 13, 2007 Mijal Grinberg "Environment minister calls for probe into toxic Negev blast" Haaretz Archive, 2007 Tal, Alon. "Ramat Hovav council head: Hazardous waste dump site violates the law;" Haaretz (20/12/2007)¹