Abu Dhabi to start filling underground aquifer

Abu Dhabi will soon start filling its first man-made underground water storage facility in the emirate with seven million gallons of desalinated water, a report published by the Khaleej Times daily said yesterday.

From October 2015, the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi, EAD, will begin the task to fill the aquifer in the emirate, which can store fresh water for up to 100 years.

A project that took over a decade to complete, the first underground water storage, located in Liwa in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi Emirate, will be completed in October - ready to be injected daily with fresh, potable desalinated water.

After 27 days, the Liwa aquifer will reach its full, planned capacity of five billion gallons of water, which will be used only in case of extreme emergency.

Dr. Mohammed Dawoud, Water Resources Advisor for EAD, said, "In case of an emergency, we can extract the water and supply it to Abu Dhabi and its surrounding areas using the existing water pipelines. The five billion gallons aquifer would be able to supply 180 litres of water per person per day for 90 days."

He said the first thought was building water reservoirs, but after plenty of studies, they were deemed economically and environmentally unsuitable.

"To store five billion gallons of water, enough for emergencies only for 90 days, we would need to build 2,000 reservoirs.

Apart from the expense, imagine how much land would be needed," said Al Dawoud.

"Also, in reservoirs, water is stagnant and opened to air pollution, so after five to seven days it would need changing. In aquifers, water can be stored for up to 100 years."

Once the Liwa aquifer is filled with water, work will start on a second one to be built in the Al Ain area, thus having both the eastern and the western regions of the emirate covered in case of an emergency.

The EAD began considering having water reserves for the emirate as scarcity of water became an increasingly realistic threat all over the world.

The environment agency began researching Abu Dhabi Emirate's underground water resources and found that the few underground water reserves left were very high in salinity.

Only two fresh water ones were found, one in Liwa, and another near Al Ain, and these were the two spots selected to build on the existing natural aquifers.

In 2003, the EAD began the pilot project in Liwa, and for five months kept injecting the underground reservoir with desalinated water for a few days, then extract it to check the quality.

After three years of assessments, the full scheme project was finally given the green light.

In case of a severe drought or any other emergency, the water inside the aquifer may be extracted using especially built recovery wells. Altogether, there are 105 recovery wells, but only 70 of them are designated to be operational, the rest being used as back up.
Source: WAM