thumb|250px|The Hukok Canal, an open canal of the National Water Carrier

thumb|250px|Water flows from the pressure pipe above the Sea of Galilee into the Hukok open canal

thumb|250px|Water flows from the Hukok open canal into the inverted siphon in Nahal Amud

thumb|250px|The inverted siphon in Nahal Amud

thumb|National Water Carrier of Israel

The National Water Carrier of Israel (, HaMovil HaArtzi) is the largest water project in Israel, completed in 1964. Its main purpose is to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee in the north of the country to the highly populated center and the arid south and to enable efficient use of water and regulation of the water supply in the country. It is about long. Up to of water can flow through the carrier each hour, totalling 1.7 million cubic meters in a day.

The carrier consists of a system of giant pipes, open canals, tunnels, reservoirs and large scale pumping stations. Building the carrier was a considerable technical challenge as it traverses a wide variety of terrain and elevations. Most of the water works in Israel are integrated with the National Water Carrier.

History

Planning and construction

While preliminary plans were made before the establishment of the State of Israel, detailed planning began after Israeli independence in 1948. The construction of the project, originally known as the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, started in 1953, during the planning phase, long before the detailed final plan was completed in 1956. The project was designed by Tahal and constructed by Mekorot. It was inaugurated during the tenure of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and completed in June 1964 under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, at a cost of about 420 million Israeli lira (at 1964 values).

Route

thumb|250px|The National Water Carrier near Beit Netofa

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 to a pumping station, initially called "Eshed Kinrot" or "Eshed Kinnarot", later renamed "Sapir" (English name: Sapir Pumping Station) after Pinhas Sapir, co-founder of Mekorot in 1937 (see also Tel Kinrot for the site).

The pipeline entering the lake is composed 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. the fourth largest in the world, is located at the southwestern edge of the Beit Netofa Valley. The water first passes through two large 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. His book served as the basis for a detailed water resource plan which was prepared by James Hayes, an engineer from the USA, who proposed utilizing all water sources in Israel (2&nbsp;km<sup>3</sup> per annum) for irrigation and the production of electricity. In 1964, Syria attempted construction of a Headwater Diversion Plan that would have prevented Israel from using a major portion of its water allocation, This project and Israel's subsequent physical attack on those diversion efforts in 1965 were factors which played into regional tensions culminating in the 1967 Six-Day War. In the course of the war, Israel captured from Syria the Golan Heights, which contain some of the sources of the Sea of Galilee.

Receding Dead Sea and sinkholes

The surface of the Dead Sea has shrunk by about 33% since the 1960s, which is partly attributed to the much-reduced flow of the Jordan River since the construction of the National Water Carrier project. The EcoPeace Middle East, a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian environmental group, has estimated that the annual flow into the Dead Sea from the Jordan is less than of water, compared with former flows of between and .

The water level of the Dead Sea had been declining, , at an annual rate of more than a metre, which is attributed to the battle for scarce water resources in the very arid region.

  • Description of the National Water Carrier by Shmuel Kantor, former chief engineer of Mekorot, Israel's national water company
  • Fossil Water Reserves - Israel - from two hundred billion (10<sup>9</sup>) to "several hundred billion" cubic meters of water