Economic Valuation of Treated Wastewater use in Sustainable Agriculture – New El-Mahsama Wastewater Treatment Plant in Sinai, Egypt

In arid and highly populated country like Egypt, treated wastewater can serve as an important water resource to offset the increasing irrigation water requirements, as far as strict safeguards for human health and environment protection are met. Adequate wastewater collection, treatment and safe use in irrigating agricultural crops, with safe disposal of wastes can lead to significant environmental and health benefits. In 2020, the first mega wastewater treatment plant (El-Mahsama WWTP) was constructed in the east of Suez Canal in Sinai Peninsula to treat 1.0 million m3 daily from El-Mahsama agricultural drain and other small drains mainly for cultivating
relevant agricultural crops in Sinai. This research aims to identify the economic valuation as well as to conduct a cost benefit analysis (CBA) of the favorable safe and sustainable wastewater treatment management from El-Mahsama WWTP in agriculture. An economic valuation analysis (CBA) was conducted for ten years. The highest cost was found associated with the construction of the agriculture schemes including the installation of the modern irrigation systems, land management services, pumps, pipes, nozzles, valves, civil and other auxiliary works. Benefits accrued from the agriculture scheme (cotton, flax, kenaf, peanuts, sesame & soya beans, jojoba, canola, and sunflower), which are generally cash crops, was found on the top benefit, with the highest monetary value. In less than three years of operating El-Mahsama WWTP Project, it can recover its full costs (about 23.5 Billion Egyptian pounds), then it starts to accrue benefits. The cost-benefit ratio was doubled in 10 year of operation. It was proven that expansion in constructing WWTPs and use of the treated wastewater safely and sustainably for irrigating agriculture schemes as well as wood trees is a successful practice toward improving WWT management and use in the future, and to justify the potentiality of investments in wastewater treatment domain. This brings benefits and scores no risks to human health nor environmental quality. The detailed results support the decision makers in water resources planning and management in Egypt. The approach and results of this research paper can be used as a planning guide and be replicated in other WWTP projects with similar conditions.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Not applicable

The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.