Environmental Management of Groundwater in Egypt via Artificial Recharge Extending the Practice to Soil Aquifer Treatment (SAT)

Abstract

The economic development in Egypt and the rapid growth rate in various development sectors are dependent on the availability of water resources. Egypt has turned to use the groundwater to satisfy the growing demand, at the expense of exceeding the safe yield and overexploiting the aquifer systems in some areas such as western Nile Delta and along the desert fringes in the Nile Valley. Shortage of irrigation water sources in Egypt bring out the issue of using non-conventional water resources. As a part from the Environmental Management of Groundwater Resources, Egypt launched a program to examine the feasibility of artificial recharge for the augmentation of groundwater supply. Through this program a detailed study has been carried out for the investigation and potential site selection for carrying out an artificial recharge experiment using treated wastewater. The aquifer artificial recharge by treated sewage water is a new tool can be applied in Egypt for using the sewage water safety compared with the direct use. Through the aquifer soil (unsaturated zone), advanced sewage treatment stage will be added by which most of the biological load will be removed and partially reduction in concentrations of some chemicals can be found. This paper presents the preliminary hydrogeological investigation and tested scenarios for the aquifer storage which used to evaluate the technical environmental, consideration in Abu Rawash farm as a case study. In addition to applying environmental impact assessment (EIA) of artificial recharge experiment to assess the feasibility guidelines for the future recharge projects. Results indicated that artificial recharge for groundwater aquifer using treated wastewater is promising whoever it needs more detailed study to assess the aquifer feature influences the mechanism of recharge with treated wastewater. The health risk due to changes in the physical and chemical conditions prevailing in the aquifer or due to limited adsorption capacities as well as the microorganisms survive and toxic pollutants degradation.