Supreme Court Rejects Dead Sea Works Appeal Over Half-Billion Water Fee
The Supreme Court rejected Dead Sea Works' request for an additional hearing, cementing a ruling that requires ICL to pay half a billion shekels for water usage.
The Supreme Court rejected today the request by Dead Sea Works for an additional hearing regarding a ruling requiring them to pay for water pumped from the Dead Sea concession area. The decision means that 330 million shekels already paid by ICL will remain with the public, supplemented by an additional 170 million shekels.
Last December, environmental organizations Adam Teva V'Din and Lobby 99 achieved a legal victory when the Supreme Court ruled that ICL plants are not exempt from water fees. The company had argued it was exempt from separate payments for water usage beyond the annual royalties paid to the government for mineral concessions.
The total payment for 2017-2030 is estimated at approximately half a billion shekels, funds that will return to the public through the water sector and are expected to lower water tariffs. With the rejection of the additional hearing request, the ruling has received final approval.
Advocate Merav Abadi, regulation manager at Adam Teva V'Din, stated that the ruling concludes a long-standing struggle to establish that public natural resources are not free for the taking, ensuring major corporations properly compensate the public.
