Decision Support Tool for Water Reclamation Beyond Technical Considerations – Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian Case Studies

While the Middle East and North African region is facing challenges to sustain water security, water reclamation has received increasing consideration as a favourable mitigating solution. Despite the availability of adequate technologies; economic, political, legal, social, and environmental constraints often hamper stakeholders and especially decision makers to exploit the existing potential into implementation of solutions. In this paper, a comprehensive assessment for water reclamation and reuse was developed. This assessment consists of four objectives, namely A) applying a decision-support tool (DST) for water reclamation potential for municipal wastewater, B) applying a DST for simulating and estimating lifecycle costs of project-related technologies for water reclamation (municipal and industrial wastewater, drainage canal water), C) assessing the national-level conditions for water reuse with a multi-criteria decision analysis, and D) establishing exemplary strategies, barriers and measures for water reuse. This analysis considers six thematic subjects: policy and institution, economy, society, water management, legislation, and environment. The assessment was applied to food and non-food crop irrigation in Egyptian, Moroccan, and Tunisian case studies. For all defined case studies, adapted treatment trains that could treat wastewater to the desired quality at reasonable costs were identified and are presented in this paper. The results show that technological options are available for water reuse, but the concept is not widely implemented in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. This paper identifies key barriers and drivers for the implementation of water reclamation for irrigation. In particular, the considered countries show different characteristics regarding efficient water management, water pricing, subsidies and wastewater tariffs, implementation of monitoring and reporting systems or legal aspects related to the use of reclaimed water for food crop irrigation. Further exploration of case studies on high potential water reuse and financially affordable wastewater reclamation, particularly case studies that explore the impacts of policies and practices across countries, would be useful to help the Middle East and North African region improve its water security situation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.