Posted on 02/08/2005 4:03:02 PM PST by Willie Green
The U.S. government plans to invest $250 million in a desalination facility in the Caesarea area to serve the Palestinian Authority. The facility, which will be close to the planned Hadera desalination plant, will provide 100 to 150 million cubic meters of drinking water annually to Palestinian West Bank residents.
It is unclear what method will be used to construct the plant, one of the largest in the world. An international tender may be published, but the U.S. administration usually closes its tenders to foreign companies.
Nor has it yet been determined whether the tender will be for construction of the facility, or a BOT tender in which the bidders build the plant, operate it for the duration of a franchise - during which time they are entitled to the revenue it generates - and then transfer the plant to the state.
Construction will be financed by the U.S. administration, and the water sales to the Palestinian Authority will be subsidized as part of its aid package.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
I think it will be a waste of otherwise good benjamins. Palestinians have no development plans. It is international organisations, committees, forums who think for them. Palestinians received to-date $4.5 bln. internationally since 1993-94, and it hasn't worked in any noticeable way. There is a total of 3.290.000 of palestinians in the WB and Gaza. See, guys, even a fraction of that enormous money already spent (or stolen) if simply given to palestinians would be enough to resettle them and to secure their future. But there is already a whole vertical structure of parasites developed around palestinians, they want continuous employment in their "Refugee Unlimited Corp.".
I'm not a pile on kinda guy. Too much groping in the pile. I agree with you that satiated masses tend not to Jihad so much. Fact is, built a plant today, tomorrow you'll get "Well what have you done for me lately". That said, CA could use some of these to quit sucking the Colorado river dry. Why can't we put the pilot plant in Southern California. If it works, give the plans to the PA and say, good luck. They built their own stuff, they're more likely to take care of it. We build it, they'll ask for 25 million in annual funds to take care of it.
Would that we had that here, in Los Angeles.
A water supply for Gaza is an important piece of the puzzle. The Arabs can't be trusted with a burned out match, so the Road Map is just as a big a load as Oslo was. Giving them incentives to move to Gaza would, first off, mean providing water.
That said, it's important to make sure Israel has a reliable water supply, and a desalination system (and/or pipeline from Turkey, running undersea, with a side trip to Cyprus) and probably more than one should accompany such a system for Gaza.
Once Syria gets regiminated (ooh, I love it when I coin one), Jordan's water supply will no longer be partially denied by the illegal Syrian dams. Or at least, one would think so...
Yep, you got that right...It's right there in the article
Construction will be financed by the U.S. administration, and the water sales to the Palestinian Authority will be subsidized as part of its aid package.
Unless they're meaning Saudi Arabia will do the subsidizing
They don't have any salt mines over there, I suppose we'll have to supply that too...
Hey, I've got an idea...Just buy 'em a pump...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.