The State of Israel is losing hundreds of millions of shekels each year by not enforcing regulations that would charge companies for dumping pollutants into the Jewish state's waters.

In its annual State of the Seas report, Israel's Zalul Environmental Association found that more than 50 million cubic meters of industrial waste is dumped into the country's coastal waters each year by special permit of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Issuance of Discharge Permits. However, the state has failed to collect any of the discharge fees that the committee is supposed to collect. Under Israeli law, companies are permitted to dump their wastes only after paying a discharge fee for the necessary permit. Including municipal sewage from treatment plants, Zalul estimated that more than 100 million cubic meters of waste have ended up in Israel's waters.

Zalul's report looks at the discharge fees that Israel should have collected from companies requesting permits to dump their waste. According to the group's calculations, based on fees of 4 to 16.75 shekels per cubic meter, the state has lost out on at least 200 million shekels and maybe as much as 900 million (the equivalent of approximately 250M U.S. dollars).

Rather than being put toward investments to protect the environment or effluent treatment technologies, Zalul found that these millions of shekels are instead remaining in the hands of corporations that show little remorse for their actions or concern for the environment.

"In our efforts to protect Israel's seas and rivers, Zalul is pushing for the implementation of a discharge fee, which actually is already part
of the law," said Sagit Rogenstein, Zalul's deputy director. "Such pollution taxes or discharge fees are common in most western countries, as no one is allowed to pollute the environment for 'free' nowadays. The 2008 State of the Sea Report was written in an attempt to make the public aware of how much money the State of Israel is losing by not implementing this discharge fee - money that can be used to rehabilitate rivers and help give back to the devastated environment."