Pumping and injection of surplus desalinated seawater as part of the new management of the groundwater resources in Israel

Abstract

For many years, groundwater was the main water resource in Israel. Relying for years on the storage of the aquifers dropped their water level close to their red lines and exposed the aquifers to salinization hazards. Climate change effect is expected to lead to additional reduction of about 2% per year in the rainfall leading to long term reduction in the aquifers recharge. Those conditions brought the Government of Israel to produce desalinated seawater as a new artificially water resources reducing the groundwater pumping and rehabilitating the aquifers storage. During low demand periods there is a surplus of high-quality desalinated seawater for hours or days that can be temporary injected and stored in the aquifers and later pumped during high demand period. Basically, artificial recharge is done in many ways and techniques. The most common ways are injection in infiltration ponds or through injection wells. This paper is focused on activities that were done in injection wells. The main outcome from the pilots was that the new design and construction of the injection wells reduced dramatically the well loss and improved the specific capacity (hourly discharge versus the dynamic drawdown) during the injection. Proper Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) should combine infiltration ponds with injection wells for injecting the surplus water together with batteries of pumping wells for pumping the injected water in short time during high demand periods.