The Water Supplies of Bahrain Island – 21 Years On

Abstract

SYNOPSISThe Paper describes the dramatic changes which have occurred in the provision of public water supplies in Bahrain over the past 21 years since an earlier paper' outlined the original situation in 1965. It shows how the serious and irreversible ramifications of the continuously declining piezometry and increasing salinity of the natural, brackish, artesian groundwaters were tackled by the Government. A massive and imaginative programme was introduced to convert almost the whole island population from groundwater to mainly desalinated water by 1986. The relative success of this expensive programme and its novel use of reverse osmosis for desalinating the deeper saline water to relieve the piezometric pressure invasions of the upper fresh water aquifers is discussed. Finally, the outlook for the future stability and management of the island's total water resources is mentioned.