A Jerusalem school uses its roof to help maximize water resources

Pupils, parents cooperate to collect rainwater for toilets, garden.

By EHUD ZION WALDOKS
poor man rain 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
poor man rain 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
About 20 parents gathered at the TALI Geulim Elementary School in the Geulim (Baka) neighborhood of Jerusalem on Friday morning. This time, it wasn't for a parent-teacher meeting or a committee meeting. Instead, they congregated around two giant plastic cisterns, meters of rubber tubing, a ladder and some tools to build a rain-collecting system on the school's roof to replace the water supply used in the toilets and gardening. "This project ties in two programs in which this school participates - TALI [enriched Judaic studies] and being an Education Ministry certified green school," Principal Eti Yedidia said as the parents were gathering. This year, the pupils will learn about the water situation in Israel as well as prayers and stories from Jewish tradition about water. They will learn about the prayer for rain and next week there will be a study session for parents and teachers to delve into Jewish sources on rain, she said. As a green school, the pupils spend five to six hours a week on science and the environment. Last year, they studied global warming and focused on recycling. Fifth grader Ori Tenne explained that they had learned about the water situation in Israel already. "There isn't a lot of water in Israel and so we need to conserve and not waste it and we are saving water here. A man came and explained how there wasn't enough water getting to Lake Kinneret," he said. While Ori didn't seem entirely certain about the details of the new school plan - he wasn't sure whether the water was going to the school's water cooler or not - he understood Israel's dire water situation quite clearly. His mother, Leah, who is on the parents committee and represents the school to the TALI Fund, explained that they had been trying for a while to get the project off the ground, but had encountered budgetary issues. "A mother whose children don't go here anymore, Nati Gill Fogel, had been pushing for it quite strongly, but we didn't have the funds. We joined TALI last year and so I approached them. They gave us a modest sum and one of the parents donated half of the rest," she said. It was the parents themselves who were constructing the system, she added. Amir Yechieli, a water systems design specialist who focuses on harvesting rain, supervised the project. It was he who came to speak to the pupils earlier in the year about the water crisis. "There are one billion cubic meters per year of rain which falls on Israel, but the country only captures a fifth of it. If we captured even just half of the run-off to the sea we'd solve the water problem," he said. For Fogel, the initiator of the project at Geulim, environmental activism flows naturally from her profession as a feng shui adviser. "I've been keen on ecology and environment for many, many years. A school is a big institution which needs to reduce its demand. If you save on water [and water bills], then you can put that money into education - it's a two-fold advantage," she said while watching the parents begin building. "I've started to soften them up already for the next project - producing our own electricity through solar panels within five years," she said.