A Study on Usage of Treated Wastewater as Resource Management for the Sustainable Development of Al Amerat

Abstract

Abstract Sustaining life on Earth is dependent upon water as an invaluable resource. Oman is in a semi-arid region where the majority of the water demand is satisfied by the desalination process. The government allocates a substantial budget for both desalination and wastewater treatment processes to develop an advanced infrastructure for water and wastewater treatment projects. One of the cutting-edge technologies that has been developed to treat water is SBR, for the removal of toxic elements, coarse particles, pollutants, etc before the treated wastewater eventually gets discharged into the sea. In the present study, Al-Amerat (Muscat Governorate) has been selected to assess the usage of treated wastewater for various purposes to evaluate the sustainability of the current water resources management. This research focuses on assessing the volume of wastewater produced in the study area to navigate the most sustainable approaches for the management of the treated wastewater such as gardening, agriculture, industrial activities, and groundwater recharge. Future generated wastewater has been quantified considering the forecasted population in 2040 in the study area. Various maps such as geomorphology, land use/land cover maps, and groundwater potential maps were generated using GIS in this study. The water demand for various sectors has been assessed with an estimation of 7%, 20%, and 63% of the total wastewater produced (per day) that can be utilized for groundwater recharge, gardening, and agriculture respectively. This study eases the burden on the desalination process by adopting alternative approaches to enhance the sustainability of the current measures.