But four years of drought have overtaxed Israel’s unmatched array of desalination and wastewater treatment plants, choking its most fertile regions and catching the government off-guard.
"No one imagined we would face a sequence of arid years like this, because it never happened before," said Uri Schor, spokesman for Israel’s Water Authority.
The Sea of Galilee, technically a lake near the border with Syria, is forecast to hit its lowest level ever before winter rains come, despite the fact that pumping there was massively reduced.
Underground aquifers, the other main freshwater source, are nearing levels that will turn them salty.
How to cope with the crisis is becoming an increasingly touchy subject in Israel.
Proposed cuts to water use for the coming year, more than 50 percent in some areas, prompted vehement opposition from farmers, who already face tough restrictions and would have been the hardest hit.
The government quickly backtracked.
In the Middle East, one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, water is also the subject of wider tensions.
The commercial sector invested another 7 billion shekels into the construction of five desalination plants.
The lack of reliable waters supply leaves farmers with deep uncertainty.