The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has signed on as one of the financial backers of Israeli research aimed at protecting water supplies from chemical attacks by terrorists.
A team at Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has been working for years on a method of identifying and neutralizing chemical and biological contaminants in civilian water supplies.
The Jerusalem Post reported this week that they are nearly ready to deploy the system.
By the end of next year, a monitoring station using sophisticated scanners to rapidly check for harmful substances will be installed in Tel Aviv.
Prof. Israel Schechter of the Technion's Faculty of Chemistry said the project became a priority during the anthrax scare that followed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Schechter also noted that after invading Afghanistan, American forces discovered Al Qaeda documents detailing attacks on civilian water supplies.