Haifa's "Environmental Quality" committee dealt with the conclusions of the latest State Comptroller's report - report from the discussion

Full disclosure: the author is an activist on environmental issues in the group "Mothers and Fathers Save the Haifa Bay"

On Tuesday, August 7, 8, the Haifa Municipality's "Environmental Quality" committee was held, this time dealing with the conclusions of the latest state auditor's report. The auditor criticized, among other things, the actions of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Planning Administration, and the Ministry of Health in their conduct regarding pollution The donkey and the risks in Haifa Bay.

While representatives from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (Shloma Katz, District Director), the Ministry of Health (Prof. Yoni Dubnov, Deputy District Director) and the Haifa Cities Association (Ofer Dressler, CEO, Ella Berlin, responsible for air issues, and Sharit Golan Steinberg - Chairman) ) were present, representatives from the planning director who were invited, did not come to the discussion.  

Epidemiological studies starting this year
representative of the Ministry of Health, Prof. Yoni Dubnov, claimed later to the State Comptroller's audit that indeed "We were not strong enough" On the subject of epidemiological health monitoring. He noted that the new studies that were supposed to be released in 2017 actually only started last year (2019). Tubanov explained that the cancer study that will examine young people from the age of enlistment until receiving cancer - was launched, late, because the leader of the study passed away. Study Newborn monitoring also started this year. Children's study - will compare children from Haifa to children in the center of the country. In this study, pollutants will be tested in body materials and also biological monitoring according to the resolution of an exact residential address.

The analysis of the studies will take time
The joy is still early - it turns out that firstly it is still too early to talk about the results of the studies that started fashionably late, and in addition - it turns out that when the results of the 7 epidemiological studies arrive, there will be a problem, since the State Comptroller must establish a joint body that will look at things from a comprehensive perspective together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Therefore, integration of all studies will be required as early as next year. The Ministry of Health does not have budgets for this, nor the manpower / body to do it. While in other countries such studies are summarized 30 experts For two years, in Israel if a budget and five experts are found for this - from the point of view of the Ministry of Health - it will be a success. To make a long story short, when the public tries to understand what it can conclude from the studies, it will also face an obstacle that is currently not clear how it will be resolved.

"There is no body that will do this, there is no budget, and this is one of the things that we are already alerting"
At this point, when everyone present in the room realized that the delay in the new studies was breaking new records, I turned to Prof. Dubnov while mentioning the statutory planning chapter in the auditor's report, in which criticism was also found against the Ministry of Health - and asked why if the Ministry of Health would receive research results only while How many years - why doesn't he stop all the expansion plans? I also referred to the "Northern Lands" plan - a plan that has not been stopped and which will add 1.28 million cubic meters of oil and distillates, the vast majority of which are new together with a new petrochemical/refining industry area for realization, and this with another 600,000 cubic meters of distillates requested in the new bay port.  

The Ministry of Health is not dominant in the fight for the future of Haifa Bay
Additional questions that I addressed to the representative of the Ministry of Health: "How is it possible that the Ministry of Health is not the one who came to the planning committees and fought? .. You are the ones who should have come to the committees and stopped 600,0000 cubic meters of distillates in the new Gulf port and stopped 1.28 million cubic meters of oil and distillates in the northern lands and a huge area of petrochemicals. It is not possible that volunteer residents should invest years of their lives to replace a government office that does not bother to intervene..."

 Prof. Dubnov Answered in response that the Ministry of Health published back in December 2015 Reference report of the Ministry of Health for morbidity in Haifa, a report that is still valid today. In this report, for the first time, the Ministry of Health came out with a policy change and said that there is a causal relationship Between what is happening in Haifa and the pollution. The report talked about cancer, heart disease, asthma and more.  
Dubnov claimed in the discussion: "Our role is very important as a warning role, we are the child who shouts fire fire... now people know there is fire. He claimed that the representative of the Ministry of Health - the district engineer sits on the planning committees And that in the office we constantly discuss the same guidelines for planning ".

In my opinion, his answer did not provide an answer - why and how in fact new programs that increase the pollution were approved and why the Ministry of Health is not the one that revealed this to the public itself - including calculations of the additional deaths, and the patients that will result as a result...

Prof. Dubnov He mentioned that the auditor stated that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Environmental Protection should consider establishing a dedicated national institute that would conduct research on health and the environment and access information and alert the public, and so Prof. Dubnov replied: "It is possible that an institute will be established, it is possible that there will be another decision, it's not in our hands"…

"The Ministry of Health is no longer the gatekeeper regarding the health of the residents of Haifa"
Shira Gorli, director of the master plans and policy planning unit in the Haifa municipality, who is a member of the environmental quality committee, claimed: "I constantly feel in discussions that you are not acting as our gatekeepers... I want the Ministry of Health to hear that there is such and such a threshold - This is how I reached the threshold, so far. Maybe a hundred people dying a year is okay? When you pave a new road - people will die, it's a risk you take, the question is do you have an umbrella that can say here we've reached the red line or not?"

 Prof. Dubnov, representative of the Ministry of Health He replied - "We do not disapprove of the 2015 report and those statements of the deputy director general, the director general and the minister. We say that our goal is a health value - and not an environmental value." In response - we were asked what is the health goal?

Dubnov replied "If we stay with, for example, fine particles as there are today - the value is 2.5 times what the World Health Organization determined - So we have an excess of morbidity At least 15 percent". We are still far from our goal..."..."Every soul is important - we have no such thing as ten people dying and that's fine. There is no such thing. If we meet the goal value - that's the goal - The Ministry of Health opposes any additional contamination and opposes it For the fact that we will only adhere to an environmental value - we have changed our policy... As soon as we talk about a target value for particles of the 2.5 micron type as a marker, we can indeed differentiate between particles that are the result of desertification and those that come from burning fuels, as much as we reduce the particles that come from burning fuels - we are on the right track. The effect of the particles that come from the burning of fuels is a much more serious effect". 

The district manager of the Ministry of Environmental Protection Mr. Shlomo Katz - responded to the report
(In my opinion, the Ministry of Environmental Protection internalized the seriousness of the state auditor's claims)
בתגובה לדו"ח המבקר, תיאר כ"ץ מחדש "ירידות זיהום אוויר" שקרו לטענתו במפרץ חיפה, ירידות שמבקר המדינה חלק עליהן והוכיח כי לא כך הדברים. כ"ץ התייחס לירידה "מ-4000 טון של תרכובות אורגניות נדיפות לפחות מ 1000 טון", כהגדרתו.
He claimed that about 20 plants were closed in a decade, and that natural gas came in and all of these contributed to a decrease in pollution." According to Katz, in the next two years more small plants will be connected to natural gas and then It will be impossible to drop more than that in the pollution level.
Shlomo Katz: "Most of the actions have already been done... most of the investments that needed to be made have already been made in the last decade, much more than that - it is not possible and there is nothing to be done"...
He attacked the state auditor's report and claimed that the report does not talk about goals and objectives, but only about methods of monitoring, supervision and enforcement. He also claimed - "Give me a number or a value that needs to be reached and we didn't set such goals - which could be lower? in what ? Nitrogen oxides? In sulfur oxides? in particles? Boy or C? What and how? ...
I don't see - that it is possible to reach significantly lower values ​​than the values ​​that are set."

In response to Shlomo Katz's words, the chairman of the committee replied that in the "Fertilizers" factory, the factory is given the option to exceed the standard as a relief. Katz admitted on this issue, that the Ministry of Environmental Protection allows the plant to exceed pollution records, but emphasized that between the records there are periods of low emissions...
(AN: From an epidemiological point of view, a situation of exposure to abnormal pollution peaks is extremely serious, and the low emission periods between the peaks are not relevant).

Katz further claimed: "Overall, the auditor's report - a difficult report, I can say what we did to implement it, but in the end the auditor does not talk about the values, he does not talk about Reductions - But on the contrary, he explicitly states that in the last decade there was a reduction very significant - in all pollutants". It should be noted that the auditor disagrees on this issue...

As the chairman of the committee commented to the district manager that There were no decreases in all pollutants And not all the pollutants were reached, he replied sarcastically: "Which pollutants are not?". When asked if there is a decrease in cancer patients, he claimed "I don't understand anything about cancer patients"…

Regarding questions about enforcement and the ministry's powers, he claimed: "Our cases are not simple, they are very complex...for this we invented financial sanctions so that not everything would go to criminal enforcement...in order to pass judgment more quickly." 9 financial sanctions. Regarding criminal proceedings, he claimed: "If I come to the hearing and the case is conducted in court for seven years, is that treatment?"

Also to another question about not meeting the goals of the pollutant sulfur dioxide - (when there was a reduction of 10 percent instead of 75 percent between 2014-2018) he tried to slip away and answered - "Give me numbers on the amount... from which number?".

Later, he admitted that pollutant decreases resulted from the closure of Haifa Chemicals, during which 580 tons of volatile organic compounds decreased. When he was asked if that's the case, if the plant hadn't been closed, then there wouldn't have been resistance to the reduction targets - he claimed "What does it matter? Reducing pollution is important to you"...

Katz refused to respond to questions about Bazen and the integration factories, claiming that he had a conflict of interest: "If you say the word Bazen one more time, I will get up and leave." At some point he intended to leave the room due to questions on this topic.

Katz claimed on the subject of the dangerous substances - that the most dangerous gases - chlorine bromine and ammonia that were in large quantities in Haifa Bay - left here because of the closing of electrochemical industries, Haifa Chemicals, and following the Shapir Committee. According to him, "Once we have removed or significantly reduced air pollution and hazardous materials, there is not much left to go." Katz did not refer to the series of programs that increase the hazardous materials in the Haifa Bay - for example the Gulf port and the fuels.

On the topic of air pollution with fine respirable particles - Katz, as usual, blamed the desert for the levels of fine respirable particles, "We are in the desert as a whole and in general there is a higher level of particles than the OECD countries, we are in the Middle East"...

In response to this, I replied, in the name of the "Organization of Mothers and Fathers Saving Haifa and the Kiryats":
"At the end of April 2019 - residents here were suffocated... you You found that the anomalies were caused by the factories Without mentioning names - and not particles from Europe and the desert and other places - and in contrast The ministry's policy was to delete the days of exceptions because they are doing the factories a favor, according to the union's report - where it says that anomalies were deleted because the factories were malfunctioning..."..."I want an answer Why are seven days of industrial exception deleted and not counted?"

Regarding the new port - the port of the Gulf and the fuels Shlomo Katz claimed that the Haifa municipality in the past (headed by Yona Yahav) was the one that supported its establishment: "Who promoted the port? Who pushed for there to be a port?"

He also claimed that "the magnitude of the polluters from the ships is on the order of magnitude of all the factories together, if not more." He also claimed that the number of ships will continue to grow here, and since they did not ratify Annex 6 of the Marpole Convention, this is a problem.

At this point Prof. Dubnov - from the Ministry of Health claimed " The expected number of ships is 2.5 times more than today" . In response, the deputy mayor, Nachshon Tzuk, replied that in his opinion the problem is not in the Gulf port but in the Kishon Shipyards and according to him the amount of containers will double, not the number of ships.

Shlomo Katz replied: "The port is not taken care of and this is orders of magnitude... If the state does not approve the Marpaul Convention and did not sign it - and did not approve - you cannot enforce laws that the state did not approve. The ship is not limited in the type of fuel that can enter it, it does not matter if it is a Kishon or a bay - in Raya There is no treatment for the totality of the port. It is on the order of magnitude of the entire industry together."

Later, Katz was asked why there is no warning to the public about unusual air pollution and inversion days.

Prof. Dubnov from the Ministry of Health claimed in response to what Katz said: 
"Our goal is clear. We want to know what is happening and what is its value specific to a specific plant for specific transportation and a specific tool from a health impact. As above environmental - this is what I would say to this day - We haven't reached the limit of our ability yet... We are not finished, it is quite a long way and we must do it together. We will not wait until the end of the studies - we have already said - We won't add a single gram of pollution here - just take it down. Any new creature or creature band - or new map - will not add but will reduce contamination."

Pungent smells of chemical substances in Kiryat Haim
Later in the discussion, the resident of the area, Shlomit Spitzer told about the pungent odors she smells in Kiryat Haim - and that she is not returned with inquiries on the subject: "They are killing us slowly... I feel that they are murdering me and my childhood in silence, in the morning and on weekends, there is no one to talk to." The district manager directed her to call the complaint hotline of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in front of everyone present, and after a long wait - the representative of the service proved her claim when, on a live broadcast - he invited the resident to complain in the Haifa district...

Union of Cities reports partial monitoring
For its part - the Association of Haifa Cities claimed that indeed not all substances are monitored - and that the association intends these days to examine a technological option and locate suppliers to add monitoring for about 60 pollutants and this to deal with, among other things, the problem of identifying the sources of odors in the Gulf.