Ramat Hovav
Ramat Hovav
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 Ramat Hovav
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| Coordinates: 31°08′06″N 34°47′28″E / 31.135°N 34.791°ECoordinates: 31°08′06″N 34°47′28″E / 31.135°N 34.791°E | ||
| District | Southern | |
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| • Type | Industrial local council | |
Ramat Hovav (Hebrew: רָמַת חוֹבָב), new official name Ne'ot Hovav (Hebrew: נְאוֹת חוֹבָב), is an industrial zone in southern Israel and the site of Israel's main hazardous waste disposal facility. Ramat Hovav Industrial Zone is the locus of 19 chemical factories, including Makhteshim Agan, a pesticide plant; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, a pharmaceuticals plant; Israel Chemicals, a bromine plant.
Many of the factories in Ramat Hovav use hazardous materials and evaporation ponds that pollute the air and leach cancer-causing chemicals into the soil and water. Initially, the toxic waste facility was privately run. According to Israeli environmentalist Alon Tal, the waste was not pretreated before transport to the site. Storage facilities were weak, barrels often rusted, toxic residues were unlabeled and reactive materials were stored near containers of cyanide. The facility was closed down repeatedly in the wake of accidents.
Ten years after its establishment, outcrops of the chalk under Ramat Hovav showed fractures potentially leading to serious soil and groundwater contamination in the future.
In 1997, when an explosion occurred in barrels storing organo-phospheros pesticides, the residents of nearby villages were not warned and time passed before they were evacuated. In 2003, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel filed a suit petitioning the government to provide health services in the village. The same year, the Arab-Jewish environmental justice organization BUSTAN worked with local Bedouin leaders to construct a health clinic out of sustainable materials in order to highlight health concerns in the region. A year later, the government built a health clinic on the other side of the village.
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Wikipedia