Wastewater Treatment and Reuse in Israel/ Yossi Inbar
The combination of severe water shortage, densely populated urban areas and highly intensive irrigated agriculture, makes it essential that Israel put wastewater treatment and reuse high on its list of national priorities. In fact, national policy calls for the gradual replacement of freshwater allocation to agriculture by reclaimed effluents. In the past, sewage has constituted a major source of water pollution. Yet, a steady process of sewage infrastructure expansion has improved the situation dramatically, with only isolated cases remaining of untreated sewage. Currently about 72% (> 300 million cubic meters (MCM)) of the wastewater produced in Israel is reclaimed for agricultural reuse. This chapter reviews the amount and sources, treatment, reuse and disposal of wastewater in Israel, in relation to existing standards of wastewater. It then concludes that Israel's water management strategy has to deal with the lack of adequate treatment of Palestinian sewage if it wants to pursue the state's domestically water quality goals.
Sewage Treatment in Gaza and Quest to Upgrade / Dr. Khalil Tubail
The environmental situation in the Gaza Strip is critical: Depletion of water resources, deterioration of water quality, shoreline and marine pollution, and land degradation. This needs regional and international efforts to enhance and protect it. Reclaimed wastewater reuse for agriculture has been recognized as an essential component in the management strategy for water shortage in neighboring countries. Like arid and semi arid countries, reuse of treated wastewater in agriculture is gaining more attention in emerging strategies for planning and development of Palestinian water resources as it represents an additional renewable and reliable water source, which would reduce the water deficit and the decline in groundwater quantity and quality. The existing three WWTPs in Gaza strip are overloaded and poorly operated. As a result, the three new planned WWTPs should be engineered in order to produce substantial quantities of treated effluent; these are valuable agricultural resources. But successful treatment and reuse requires careful planning and management to ensure that appropriate quality standards are achieved and the maximum sustainable benefits are realized economically. This chapter presents the current situation of wastewater in Gaza, the Palestinian standards for effluent quality, recommending an optimal effluent management strategy that should be pursued.
