State of Art about water uses and wastewater management in Lebanon

This paper shows the real situation about management of water and wastewater in Lebanon and focuses on problems related to urban water pollution released in environment. Water and wastewater infrastructures have been rebuilt since 1992. However, wastewater management still remains one of the greatest challenges facing Lebanese people, since water supply projects have been given priority over wastewater projects. As a consequence of an increased demand of water by agricultural, industrial and household sectors in the last decade, wastewater flows have been increased. In this paper, the existing wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) operating in Lebanon are presented. Most of them are small-scale community-based ones, only two large-scale plants, constructed by the government, are currently operational. Lebanese aquatic ecosystems are suffering from the deterioration of water quality because of an insufficient treatment of wastewater, which is limited mostly to pre-treatment processes. In fact, domestic and industrial effluents are mainly conducted together in the sewer pipes to the WWTP before being discharged, without adequate treatment into the rivers or directly into the Mediterranean Sea. Such discharges are threatening the coastal marine ecosystem in the Mediterranean basin. This paper aims at giving the current state of knowledge about water uses and wastewater management in Lebanon. The main conclusion drawn from this state of art is a lack of data. In fact, the available data are limited to academic researches without being representative on a national scale.