In July 2016, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported, citing the newspaper Globes, that state water company Mekorot was laying a pipeline linking the Ashdod, Soreq and Palmachim desalination plants. The 10 km section, 2.5 m in diameter, was designed for 30,000 m³ per hour (about 720,000 m³/day) and cost NIS 230 million (US$60 million). It formed part of an NIS 3 billion (US$780 million) national network to which all 34 seawater and brackish water desalination plants were to be connected.
The report showed that by 2016 Israel had moved beyond building individual plants and was turning desalination into an interconnected supply system able to route water to different regions as needed.