Low cost treatment intervention for pollution reduction : case study Tellin Drain in Sharkeia

Abstract EN

The overall annual supply of water from conventional water resources in Egypt is approximately 59.2 BCM.

However, 29% of this water is reused to meet the annual demand which is approximately 76.21 BCM, (Barnes J., 2012).

Agricultural drainage reuse is one of the main areas where water is reused in Egypt.

However, the constant increase in pollution loads to drain waters forms a major constraint under the drainage water reuse policy, increasing the pollution of agriculture drains forced MWRI to close some re-use pump stations to avoid contamination of irrigation canal where reuse is practiced EI Tellin drain is located in the Sharkeia Governorate, administered by Menia EL Kamh irrigation district, about 40 km north of Cairo.

EL Tellin drain has a length of 5.7 km.

Domestic wastewater is discharged directly to the drain without any treatment due to absence of a sewage collection network and wastewater treatment plant.

Water quality parameters along the drains showed low DO levels (dips below 1.0 mg/I at times) and high BOD values ranged from 50 mg/I at the beginning of the drain and 280 at the residential areas lies on the drain.

Total coliform levels were much higher than the guidelines posed by Law 48/1982.

A cheap and effective dual treatment system composed of decentralized treatment station, followed by In-stream Wetland (IW) treatment system; has been chosen as an appropriate technique to improve the water quality of EL Tellin drain.

This treatment system is proved to be effective, feasible and requires low operation/maintenance cost as no labor or added chemicals are required.

This research evaluated and modeled the efficiency of dual treatment facility composed of decentralized Treatment station followed by instream wetland using one-dimensional River Analysis System model developed by the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC-RAS) to model the water quality parameters.

The expected BOD concentration reaching to the wetlands is around 80 ppm instead of 280 ppm; in this case the in-stream wetland will work as a post treatment to reduce the inlet BOD to the allowable range.