Financial Assessment of Water Harvesting Techniques as Feasible Environmental and Economical Alternative Solutions to Large Dams: The Case of Western Slopes of Mount Lebanon
Water resources are essential and basic elements in the survival and development for any human activities. During the last decades, efforts to collect, save and enhance this pressure resource, were done by constructing large concrete dams across rivers and water catchment areas all over the world. It is becoming obvious, however, that the environmental costs of large dams are immense. In addition, they appear to have a devastating impact on human lives and biodiversity by inundating thousands of acres of forests and agricultural land. In an attempt to reduce such costs and losses and still be able to recapture this vital fugitive water resource, micro and macro water harvesting techniques are becoming promising alternatives. As water scarcity levels increase, the need for water harvesting techniques is becoming inevitable. Lebanon is expected to face water scarcity in the next few decades. Previous studies indicate that improving water storage efficiency in the Lebanese Wadies, may lead to an annual saving. Water harvesting Techniques, defined in here as; any of several techniques for increasing the amount of runoff derived from a land area, may provide a vehicle to improve the management of water resources in Lebanon. The objective of this study is to assess the economic and financial feasibility of water harvesting by determining the most appropriate techniques to be adopted with the best locations to be implemented in, in order to minimize the cost of the construction water reservoir facilities. To fulfill the stated objectives, an optimization model using linear programming techniques was developed with various scenarios. Wadi Barsa on the western slopes of Mount Lebanon was selected as the study area. Different capacities of reservoirs were considered at the micro and macro levels. The results of the simulated scenarios show that implementing macro water harvesting technique is more feasible than implementing micro water harvesting techniques. The optimal capacities for the reservoirs vary according to the considered sub-scenarios based on the targeted amount of runoff to be captured and the location of the reservoir, in the total catchment area. The sub-scenarios consist of: 50%, 75%, and 100% harvesting and recapture out of the total available water runoff. The results also indicate that the phenomenon of economies of scale exists in all the studys developed scenarios. This phenomenon indicates that the larger the capacity of the water reservoir is, given the total available surface runoff in the study area, the less is the cost of the saved m3 of water in the reservoir, thus the more feasible the solution is. The storage cost per meter varies from US$ 3.33 and US$ 2.94 for the 50% water harvesting capacity, based on the location, to US$ 3.30 and US$ 2.69 for the 100% water harvesting capacity, based also on the location.
AL-KHOURY Pierre DARWISH M.Ragy TRABOULSI M.Rafic
Management Department, College of Business Administration, Hariri Canadian University, Lebanon Financial Studies Department, College of Business Administration, Hariri Canadian University, Lebano Department of Food and Resourse Economics,University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0240, USA
国际会议
2011 International Symposium on Environmental Science and Technology(2011 环境科学与技术国际会议 2011 ISEST)
广东东莞
英文
1069-1081
2011-06-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）