British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 419

CHAPTER X.

85. Zib project. This proposal envisages the utilization of the springs which rise in the Wadi Qarn for the irrigation of the plainlands near Zib between the foothills and the sea. At present the water is led in six kilometres of earthern channel to Zib village near the sea where, together with a quantity of well water, it irrigates the fruit gardens and orange groves. The replacement of the earth channel by a concrete channel should save enough water to irrigate another 1,000 dunums. A storage reservoir would conserve the winter surplus of the springs for use in the summer and would bring another 3,000 dunums under irrigation. Statutory control of the distribution is, however, necessary.

86. Kabri springs. North of Acre, near Kabri , Nahr and Umm el Faraj villages, there are springs watering about 10,000 dunums of old established gardens, orchards and groves. The earthern irrigation channels leak considerably and, there being no legislation to control and enforce an equitable distribution of the water, there are many disputes and inefficient practices.

A construction scheme envisages a storage reservoir and modern system of concrete channels with measuring weirs and controlled outlet gates for the purpose of preventing wastage and making possible an efficient distribution of the available supplies. The problem of the improvement of the irrigation system in this area is very much bound up in old established custom and on claims to the right of usage of small fractions of various springs. Little can be done here, as elsewhere, without legislation to establish the rights and control the distribution.

87. Kurdani springs and Na'amein drain. The springs at Tell Kurdani, between Haifa and Acre, arethe largest in the Acre plain. A fraction of the water is utilised, a large part flowing down the Na'amein drain and out to sea. Some water is pumped at the source by the Consolidated Refineries Ltd. for industrial purposes and some from the new drain for irrigation.

The water has not been much used in the past, because until the new Na'mein drain was excavated by the Government Department of Health the land commanded by the spring was a swamp and unsuitable for agriculture; and the water is somewhat saline, having sixty parts of chlorine per 100,000, whereas forty parts is usually considered the limit for good cultivation.

The Water Commissioner's Department plans to utilize the Kurdani water for irrigation by a scheme based on pumping. The water would be raised at a main pumping station about twenty metres above its present level so that it could be distributed through gravity channels to the lands on the north, south and south-east.

Page 419