Mekorot, Israel's national water company, operates the Eshkol Central Filtration Plant, in the Galilee, where a new monitoring system will alert administrators within 2 minutes of a terrorist poisoning attempt. Photo: Mekorot.

An Israeli-Canadian consortium unveiled a system to monitor water reservoirs for terrorist poisoning,  Israel’s Globes business daily reported.

Presented at the WATEC Water Technology and Environmental Control Exhibition and Conference, in Tel Aviv, the system was shown to continuous spectrum analyzers to detect any organic change in water, providing water quality data every two minutes. It uses algorithms to identify the nature of any contamination, chemical, fuel, industrial waste, or paint thinner, for example.

The consortium includes Israel’s national water company, Mekorot National Water Company, and Canada’s Real Tech Inc., in collaboration with the  Technion Israel Institute of Technology and supported by Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist and the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation.

Mekorot is testing the system at its water control stations at Rosh Ha’Ayin and at the Eshkol Central Filtration Plant, in the Galilee, while Real Tech is testing the system at facilities in Canada.

Mekorot CEO Shimon Ben-Hamo said that when the system is ready, it will be installed throughout the company’s network of reservoirs and water quality stations.