The Birkat Miriam plant will produce 100 million cubic meters of desalinated water annually, improving the reliability of Israel’s water supply to Haifa, the Western Galilee and Upper Galilee regions.
Birkat Miriam will join Israel’s other large scale desalination plants in operation – Ashkelon, Ashdod, Palmachim, Hadera and Sorek 1 – while IDE also constructs Sorek 2. These desalination plants are part of an Israeli government effort to increase the amount of desalinated water in the country’s overall water resources. The water contribution from the Western Galilee plant will bring total production of desalination plants in Israel to almost 900 million cubic meters per year. This water represents 85–90% of household and industrial water consumption.
This new project is the second time in two years that IDE Technologies secured a bid to build a desalination plant in Israel. In 2020, IDE Technologies was awarded the contract to construct Sorek 2, one of the largest seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants in the world.