Smart water usage

Clean drinking water is an increasingly scarce and precious resource in view of climate change and population growth. In the border area between Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, ground water reserves are overused, the water level of the Dead Sea is sinking and the Sea of Galilee is in danger of salinity. Some settlements have to be supplied with drinking water by tanker delivery. Specialists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ are joining the search for sustainable water management for the future, the solution to the crisis in this area. In collaboration with research partners in Germany and the Middle East and regional policy makers, they have set up the SMART project: “Sustainable Management of Available Water Resources with Innovative Technologies”. Dr. Stefan Geyer, Dr. Christian Siebert and Dr. Tino Rödiger of the UFZ are using hydro-geological methods to establish how the groundwater resources are formed and how they develop over time. One problem is that a large proportion of rainwater does not seep into the ground but runs off over the barren surface straight into the heavily polluted river Jordan or the Dead Sea. Siebert states that, among other methods, they are investigating the possibility of saving some of the surface run-off by planting vegetation in trial areas to make the soil more permeable to water.

At present, agriculture is the biggest user of valuable groundwater – but the fields could be irrigated using purified waste water. The SMART project is also tackling this issue: Dr. Roland Müller of UFZ is working with three German partners in industry to test methods of purifying waste water economically. Meanwhile, Siebert and his colleagues aim to examine how this purified waste water can be drained into the underground and is further purified naturally as it percolates through the rock, to the extent that it can be used later for irrigation or even as drinking water. “If we can find good solutions for this region in crisis, some of the ideas can be transferred to other regions,” as Siebert says.

Further information: www.iwrm-smart.org