Potentiality of Waste Water Reuse in Iraq

Abstract

Reusing of treated wastewater effluent, which is normally discharged to theenvironment from municipal waste water treatment plants, is receiving anincreasing attention as a reliable water resource. The volume of this resource maybe worthily taken into consideration in the planning and implementations of waterresources projects.Currently most of the Middle East countries have developed their ownexperience in this field, however, among these countries Iraq has nothing to do inthis field, a case which make one feels sorrowful. Therefore, in this work, suchtechniques have been analytically discussed, and handy systems of drip irrigationmethods for using treated waste water in Iraq have been proposed. Moreover, inthis paper, a pioneer research study has been carried out as a leading effort on thispromising field of recycling wastewater usage in Iraq.For the time being, it has been detected that about 1 million cubic meters inthe city of Baghdad only is disposed every day to Tigris river after gettingsecondary treatment, It has been shown that in 2020 the amount of wastewater inthe city of Baghdad may increased to as much as (4388264) m3/day, which (iftreated) may irrigate as much as (43882)hectare of industrial crops, or to be usedfor planting a green belt of trees surrounding the whole city of Baghdad, thiscould help in damping the dust storms which became a predominant phenomenain the last few years.It is also shown that the concept of decentralization sewage treatment plantsand separation of gray water in source may be the most dare steps to be taken bythe authorities to comply with the new era of water reuse management in Iraq.