MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a memorandum of understanding for joint technology development this week with California Governor Jerry Brown in Silicon Valley tour, according to an article from Bloomberg Businessweek.
The agreement represents an offer by Netanyahu to help California through its current drought crisis with water conservation and desalination technologies used successfully by Israeli scientists, the article reported.
“California, I hear, has a big water problem,” Netanyahu said in an interview yesterday on Bloomberg Television. “We in Israel don’t have a water problem. We use technology to solve it, in recycling, in desalination, in deep drip irrigation and so on. And these technologies could be used by the state of California to eliminate its chronic drought problem.”
About 74 percent of California is currently classified as experiencing an 'extreme' or 'exceptional' drought, the most severe ratings according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, noted the article.
According to the article, Israel is a technological leader in fighting drought, as a country with 60 percent desert that has used techniques such as desalination of sea water, reuse of treated sewage for agriculture, early-warning software for leaks and computerized drip irrigation successfully for years.
Read the full article here.
See Water Technology’s continuing coverage of the California water crisis here:
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