(Haipo) – A petition filed by environmental organizations and residents against the construction of a power plant in the BZN complex in Haifa will be heard in the Supreme Court on Sunday, May 3, 2026. The petition seeks to annul a government order permitting the construction of a power plant in the Haifa Bay refinery complex, exempt from a building permit, a detailed plan, and without an environmental impact assessment. The petitioners were represented by attorney Omer Bachman.
Petitioners: The order is vitiated by a lack of authority and extreme unreasonableness
The petitioners – environmental organizations and residents – claim that the government order and the decision of the National Planning and Building Council to approve it are vitiated by a lack of authority, extreme unreasonableness, and fundamental flaws in the procedure. They claim that the exceptional conditions required by law for granting an exemption from a building permit and environmental review are not met: there is no real national urgency, the facility is not temporary, and its construction is liable to thwart approved plans to evacuate the refineries by 2030. It is also claimed that this is a circumvention of planning and building laws, especially in light of the fact that similar plans have been rejected in the past in a regular planning process.
Flaws in the process and disagreement between government ministries
In addition to allegations of lack of authority, the petitioners highlight flaws in the decision-making process, including hasty deliberations, incomplete information presented to the decision-makers, and poor consideration of alternatives. The petitioners also point to a professional dispute between the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Environmental Protection that was not properly resolved, a fact that they claim indicates that the decision was made without a thorough and professional examination of all relevant aspects.
Concerns about harm to public health and delay in evacuation of refineries
From an environmental perspective, the petition claims that the construction of another power plant in the Haifa Bay area, which suffers from abnormal air pollution, without an adequate environmental assessment, harms public health. The petitioners add that there is concern about extraneous considerations behind the government decision, including an attempt to delay the evacuation of the refineries from the bay. In addition to the demand to cancel the order, the petitioners also ask the Supreme Court to issue an interim order ordering the halt of all work in the complex until the petition is decided.
Who will save the residents of Haifa from the whorehouses, the stupid tycoons, only Hezbollah? What a pathetic irony.
The refineries will not be closed for another 20 or 30 years.
They bought the politicians including the current mayor.
It was all a show for the public. The "Bay Gate" cannot be built at all - there is contaminated land there that will take 10 years to clean up.
And it will cost tens of billions of shekels.
It was all a scam. As soon as they approved the demolition of only 5 tanks at the 5790 farm, they approved the construction of 2 new ones at the same time.
And the Haifa Municipality marketed this as "the first step towards evacuating the petrochemical plants." Everything is clear - this is a complete fraud.
They also built a 1 billion shekel infrastructure tunnel for the petrochemical plants and approved a huge chemical terminal for the Bay Port. So there is no intention to remove the polluting plants from Haifa Bay; on the contrary, they will let them expand further and further as part of the Israeli occupation of all the lands of the Shemen Coast.
Enough, it's about the biz and the biz that keeps you busy all day.
They are trying to rehabilitate themselves since the injury last year.
It's an enterprise that saves the country in every war and on every front.
Fuel for airplanes, asphalt for destroyed roads, gasoline and diesel fuel when we were being chased from the directions and it was not possible to import fuel.
You're tired of it, find yourself another career instead of dealing with nonsense and only the ZEN pollutes the environment, as if all the factories around and all the cars passing by don't pollute 100 times more than the ZEN that "pollutes" here, which is questionable.
How many lies in one unfortunate article…
The BZN is not expanding. The BZN is trying to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed in the attack a year ago.
Green organizations are a joke. The only green thing that drives them is the greed for money from stakeholders.
Sounds like a public fraud.