National Water Carrier of Israel - Route

Route

Water first enters the National Water Carrier through a several hundred meter long pipeline which is submerged under the northern part of Sea of Galilee. The water passes into a reservoir on the shore and then travels on to a pumping station. The pipeline is made up of nine pipes which are joined by an internal cable threaded through them. Each of these pipes includes twelve concrete pipes, each five meters long and three meters wide. As these pipes were cast, they were encased in steel pipes, sealed at the ends and floated out onto the lake. A winged star-shaped cap is mounted in a vertical section of the underwater pipe to allow water to be taken in from all directions.

Water travels to the Sapir Pumping Station on the shore of the lake where four horizontal pumps lift the water into three pipes which subsequently join to form the pressure pipe, a 2,200-meter (7,200 ft) long steel pressure resistant pipe which raises the water from -213 meters below sea level to +44 meters. From here, the water flows into the Jordan Canal, an open canal. This runs along a mountainside for most of its 17 km (11 mi) route. When full, the water in the canal is 2.7 meters (8.9 ft) deep and flows purely by gravity apart from where two deep wadis intersect the course of the canal (Nahal Amud and Nahal Tzalmon). To overcome these obstacles, water is carried through steel pipes shaped like an inverted siphon.

The canal transfers the water into the Tzalmon Reservoir, a 1 hm3 operational reservoir in the Nahal Tzalmon valley. Here, the second pumping station in the course of the Water Carrier is located, the Tzalmon Pumping Station which is designed to lift water an additional 115 meters (377 ft). Water then enters the Ya’akov Tunnel which is 850 m (2,790 ft) long and 3 meters in diameter. This flows under hills near the village of Eilabun and transfers the water from the Jordan Canal to the open canal crossing which crosses the Beit Netofa Valley – the Beit Netofa Canal.

The Beit Netofa Canal takes the water 17 kilometers and was built with an oval base due to the clay soil through which it runs. The width of the canal is 19.4 meters, the bottom is 12 meters wide and it is 2.60 meters deep, with the water flowing through it at a height of 2.15 meters. At the southwestern edge of the Beit Netofa Valley are two further reservoirs. The first of these is a sedimentation pond, holding about 1.5 million m³ of water which allow suspended matter in the water to settle to the bottom, thus cleaning the water. The second reservoir is separated from the sedimentation pond by a dam and has a capacity of 4.5 million m³. Here the inflow of water from the pumping stations and open canals is regulated against the outflow into the closed pipeline. The amount allowed through depends on water demand. A special canal bypasses the reservoirs allowing water to travel straight through the carrier.

Before entering the closed pipeline, final tests are performed on the water in the carrier, with chemicals added to bring the water to drinking standards. In 2008 Mekorot completed construction of an advanced filtration plant, the fourth largest in the world, to further cleanse the water before entering the 108" Pipeline which transports it 86 km to the "Yarkon-Negev" system near the city of Rosh HaAyin to the east of Tel Aviv and Petah Tikva.