Mekorot - Israel National Water Co. has started work on one of its largest projects for the coming years - expansion of the water desalination plant on the Red Sea known as Sabha. The installation is situated north of Eilat. As part of the project, new water pipelines will be constructed. The project as a whole will cost about NIS 500 million. RELATED ARTICLES Israel's Mekorot to sign Bahrain desalination deal Three bids received for Israel's sixth desalination plant Israel currently has five large desalination plants on its Mediterranean coast. Four of them are privately owned. The fifth is owned by Mekorot, but is in the process of being privatized. These installations provide about 80% of the potable water used by Israeli households. A tender is currently taking place for the construction of an additional desalination plant in the Western Galilee. Besides these, Mekorot has a number of desalination plants in outlying areas, one of them being Sabha in Eilat, a plant that supplies 18 million cubic meters of water annually. The water mainly serves Eilat and surrounding settlements, including tourism projects, and industry and agriculture in the southern Arava. The current work on the Sabha plant is designed to expand output by more than 50% to up to 30 million cubic meters a year. The project and associated works on land and at sea were approved in January 2021 as a national infrastructure plan, and are expected to take five years to complete. Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 26, 2021 Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2021
