IWRA Proceedings

When asked by the media if he would drink the effluent from an advanced tertiary wastewater treatment plant that he had designed, a well known engineer responded “Scientifically yes, aesthetically, no”. Even if all the scientific data supports water reuse, there is still the aesthetics issue. But water reuse is becoming accepted in Jordan even by the public at large and the religious community. Realizing the critical need for renewable water resources for Jordan, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have collaborated in implementation of a major project to demonstrate that recycled water can be used for multiple purposes safely, cost effectively and in an environmentally friendly manner. Freshwater resources in Jordan, as in most of the Middle East, are scarce, and diminishing and action must be taken now to ensure that future generations will have an adequate supply. Heavy exploitation of available water resources has lead to increasingly decreasing levels of ground water aquifers and in the level of the Dead Sea. The time has come to reuse it to the maximum extent possible or lose it for future generations...