"The Ben Gurion Airport 2000 passenger terminal (terminal 3) should not be opened until the treatment of the airport's waste is dealt with," Ministry of the Environment director general Dr. Miki Haran has written in a letter to Ministry of the Interior director general Gideon Bar-Lev.
The Ministry of the Interior has the authority to ban operations at terminal 3 for environmental reasons. If the Ministry of the Interior declines to do so, the Ministry of the Environment can ask a court for an injunction.
Haran also warned Israel Airports Authority director general Gabi Ophir that terminal 3 should not be opened without waste treatment facilities.
Haran said the cabinet ordered in 1997 that the opening of the passenger terminal was subject to dealing with the problem of waste and linking Ben Gurion Airport to external waste treatment facilities, and that these conditions must be met.
Haran said the National Planning and Building Council gave the Airports Authority permission to build an independent waste-treatment facility, after accepting the Airports Authority argument that the Ayalon sewage treatment plant would not be built in time.
Haran claims that the Airports Authority nevertheless procrastinated in designing its own waste-treatment facility, and only after three letters from the Ministry of the Environment was a plan delivered on the basis of which the ministry could issue guidelines for an environmental impact statement. The waste-treatment facility has still not been built in the two years since then.
The Ministry of the Interior said in response that Haran's letter had been sent to the relevant officials in the ministry.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 22, 2004