Development and Management of the Aquifer of Nablus City Using Modeling
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Date
2014
Authors
Tasneem Isam Is'eed
Walaa Bassam AbuRaad
Farah Fathi AbuZaid
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Abstract
The limited water availability is a serious problem for the City of Nablus. In our study, we focused on the City of Nablus that suffers from this problem in which the population increases while the available water resources remain the same. Nablus utilizes deep wells in aquifers located outside its boundaries and springs inside its boundaries in order to meet the water demand of the city. However, when we studied the situation for 2015, we found that the share of water was 81 L/cap/day and this does not meet the World Health Organization (WHO) standards of 100 L/cap/day as a minimum. While in 2040, the population[1] in the City will increase at the time when the water supply will remain the same, so the share of water will decrease to 61 L/cap/day. This leads to a water deficit of approximately 11,500 m3/day. As such, we need to develop additional sources of water to cover the increasing future water demand. In our project, we examined the idea of digging new wells inside Nablus City boundaries since the main wells that feed the city are located outside it, so we tried to find suitable places inside Nablus for new wells. In order to verify the effectiveness of this option and the possible impacts on the major springs of the city, a simulation model was developed in this study using the well-known MODFLOW software. It was constructed and calibrated under steady conditions. Then we examined some scenarios about the different locations of the new wells by considering some limits such as the depth of excavation in order to have less installation cost and the recharge area of each spring to have less effect on the spring yield. The implications of each scenario have been tested and ranked by using the simulated model output. Scenario 2 which based on: Redistribute of water in different zones of the northern side of Nablus City by distributing new wells was found the best scenario since 23.9% of the deficit will be covered. Finally, we recommend constructing this groundwater Model under transient conditions in order to indicate for how long this model will be valid and serve to cover the water deficit. To the best of our knowledge, this study was not executed before for the City of Nablus using a transient groundwater flow model. [1] This population is for the City of Nablus, the camps, and the villages that are supplied by Nablus Municipality.