Quarter of a century after four Australians died, Israel is finally cleaning up the Yarkon River

Three of the four Australians who died in the Maccabiah Bridge collapse were poisoned by polluted wastewater, which will soon be diverted.

Israel’s Water Authority, in coordination with the Yarkon River Authority, plans to completely end the streaming of purified wastewater into the river within five years, and increase the volume of clean water streamed into it.

The move comes more than 60 years after the river’s natural flow was cut off and 26 years after four Australian athletes died after falling into the river when the Maccabiah Bridge collapsed, three of them of infection.

In recent decades, the Yarkon River, which flows through the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and into the Mediterranean Sea, has come to symbolise the problem of waterway pollution in Israel. A little over 60 years ago, a water supply system was built for the Negev region by diverting the spring waters that flowed into the Yarkon.

This left only the wastewater of surrounding cities to flow into the river, making it a source of pollution.

In the past two decades, the flow of a tiny volume of spring water has been renewed into the eastern segment of the river. Concurrently, nearby cities – including Hod Hasharon and Ramat Hasharon – built new purification plants, significantly increasing the quality of the treated wastewater flowing into the river.

But according to Yonatan Raz, the river authority’s ecologist, the river cannot be brought to the desired ecological state if treated wastewater containing certain pollutants, including medications, still flows into it – no matter how well the wastewater has been treated.