Assessment of Wastewater Reuse in Kuwait and Its Impact on Amounts of Pollutants Discharged into the Sea

Abstract

Kuwait has recently implemented a vigorous campaign that aims to reclaim and reuse all treated wastewater in an at- tempt to alleviate water scarcity problem and to preserve seawater quality. This paper assesses the present status of wastewater treatment, reclamation and reuse in Kuwait, and discusses the impact of wastewater reuse on the amounts of pollutants discharged into the sea. Through analysis of the historical records of the wastewater treatment plants, it has been found that reuse of reclaimed wastewater in Kuwait has greatly reduced the amounts of pollutants discharged into the sea. Results showed that more than 50% reduction in volumes of wastewater discharged into the sea had been achieved from year 2000 to year 2010. However, this study has predicted that the amounts of wastewater discharged into the sea will start increasing again by the year 2020 due to shortages of storage capacity for reclaimed wastewater and due to the limitation of wastewater reuse applications to basically agricultural and landscape irrigations. In contrary, the on-going works and future plans of the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) are expected to overcome this problem and lead to a zero discharge of wastewater into the sea.