Water and Sewage Corporations - New Players in the Regulation of Industrial Wastewater
Water Engineering, Israel Water Magazine Vol. 80Tzvi Levinson and Gil Dror, Advocates May 2012
Until recently, industry mainly had to deal with regulation in the form of conditions added to their business licenses by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and/ or the Ministry of Health.
In 2010 and 2011, two new laws were enacted, Public Health Regulations (Quality Standards for Wastewater and Rules for Wastewater Treatment) and Rules of Water and Sewage Corporations (Industrial Sewage discharged into Water and Sewage Systems). Enactment of these regulations has caused fundamental changes in the regulatory landscape in the field of industrial waste water.
For the first time, water corporations are no longer riding the bench, but are actors in the process, with wide authority to regulate directly. There is also a new heavy responsibility on directors to act on these issues in order to maintain the quality of treated effluents discharged from the wastewater treatment plant for use in irrigated agriculture, return to nature (e.g. streams), or other economic uses.
This article briefly reviews some of the significant legal changes and their implications for managers in water corporations and in industries that discharge sewage to systems of waste water corporations.