Effects of sewage waste disposal on the groundwater quality and agricultural potential of a floodplain near Jeddah, Saud
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Effects of sewage waste disposal on the groundwater quality and agricultural potential of a floodplain near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Faisal Rehman 1 & Tariq Cheema 1
Received: 25 May 2015 / Accepted: 20 January 2016 / Published online: 31 March 2016 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2016
Abstract The area of Wadi Bani Malik located to the east of Jeddah (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is commonly known as Al Misk Lake. It is one of the many floodplains present along the dry wadi beds. As the floodplains are cultivable areas irrigated by the shallow groundwater present in the alluvium, the quality of groundwater must be investigated before determining its irrigation potential. Historically, the area of Al Misk Lake remained a dumping ground for untreated sewage for many years. Although this activity has been abandoned, but leaching of contaminants might have contaminated the groundwater, and it is not clear how much of the area of Al Misk Floodplain has been compromised. To determine the effects of sewage waste disposal on the groundwater quality, this study was undertaken to evaluate the irrigation potential of the area. The investigation focused upon the hydrogeological and geophysical studies whereby 19 groundwater samples obtained from dug wells were analyzed, geochemically. Results of chemical analysis show that all the wells are contaminated with high concentration of major ions. Electromagnetic survey carried out at the site revealed that the longitudinal extent of the plume (in the direction of groundwater flow) is much larger than perpendicular to flow. Sodium adsorption ratio, salinity hazard, and sodium percentages were found to be much higher than the irrigation water quality standards thus making the Al Misk Lake area unsuitable for irrigation purposes.
* Tariq Cheema [email protected]
1
Faculty of Earth Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Keywords Groundwater quality . Sewage waste disposal . Agricultural potential . Floodplain
Introduction The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has an area of about 2.25 million km2 making KSA as one of the largest countries of the Arabian Peninsula. KSA depends on three kinds of water resources; non-renewable groundwater resources, renewable water resources, and desalinated seawater. Only a small part of the country receives sufficient precipitation allowing a water supply that depends on water renewable resources. Sea water desalination source is limited in the coastal areas due to the transportation cost so a large part of the country rely on the non-renewable resources that were recharged before thousands of years or more (Al-Saud et al. 2011). However, KSA is one of poorest in term of renewable water resources. Although, the total groundwater resources of KSA are estimated to be around 2259 billion m3 (Al-Shayaa et al. 2012; Aly et al. 2013), an over-extraction of groundwater in order to meet the domestic and agricultural water demand has disturbed the balance of aquifers in many parts (Al-Hasawi and Hussein 2012). This disturbance
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