Shatt Al-Arab River and the seawater intrusion: causes and solutions

Abstract

. The scarcity and pollution of water resources led to environmental deterioration in Iraq, where the water needs for agricultural purposes are estimated at about 51 billion m3 annually to irrigate 11.3 million dunums and about 10 billion m3 annually for social health needs and 5 billion m3 annually for industrial, oil needs and electricity production. This paper addresses another factor exacerbating the crisis and posing another challenge to competition, which is pollution from seawater intrusion. Take the Shatt al-Arab as a case study. Shatt al-Arab is the main water source for the city of Basra in southern Iraq, where the Tigris River contributes (35%), the Euphrates River (24%), in addition to the sub-basins of the Karkheh River by (8%) and the Karun River by (33%) in its composition. The water supply in Shatt Al-Arab has significantly decreased and losing over 50% of its water supply Due to the water control by the riparian countries is conducted either through rivers diversions (Iran model) or by building massive dams (Turkey model). This has caused severe deterioration in the water quality and quantity of Shatt al-Arab River, and has also allowed seawater to intrusion, which is known to harm the ecosystem and threaten the city and the region with an environmental disaster. Field data related to the salt’s concentration at the population centers on Shatt al-Arab’s path were collected as a measure of the salinity impact of the Gulf waters on it, and then solutions were proposed to get mitigate of this effect. This present paper will provide an environmental assessment based on real data analysis and propose practical solutions to mitigate the risk of water pollution.