Mekorot, Israel's national water company, operates the Eshkol Central Filtration Plant, in the Galilee. Photo: Mekorot.

Mekorot, Israel’s National Water Company, won a contract to create a water master plan for the nation of Azerbaijan and to supply monitoring equipment to the country, Israel’s Globes business daily reported on Monday.

Azerbaijan Water Resources Development and Management director Ragif Muradov visited Israel last week to seal the four-year contract, which is estimated at “tens of millions of euros,” Globes said.

The project is part of a wide memorandum of understanding between Mekorot and Azerbaijan’s government that calls for water treatment within its capitol city of Baku, building a command and control center, and treating water contaminated by radioactive sources. So far, Mekorot has provided monitoring laboratories and sampling equipment, and has been training Azerbaijani officials at seminars in Israel.

Azerbaijan has been plagued by a tainted water problem and has been without a master water plan since gaining independence from the USSR in 1991. Soviet-era missile factories also left behind terrible environmental degradation from their pollution, still impacting the country’s water sources today.