Management of Influent Drains for Sustainable Development of Lake Burullus

Abstract

The deterioration of water quality in coastal lakes in Egypt is considered an important issue, due to its bad impact on ecological services. Lake Burullus is one of the valuable Egyptian coastal lakes suffering from high level of aquatic plants, over fishing, expansion in fish farming and agricultural drainage. Substantial volumes of water loaded with fertilizer and pesticide runoff enter the southern lake side through eight district drains. This thesis aims at assessing Burullus Lake and its drainage system, and managing the water quality of Bahr Nashart drain which is one of the main influent drains of the Lake to reduce the pollutants sources which cause water quality problems to the lake. Four scenarios were proposed to solve drain problems. The general assessment to the lake shows that the southern shore which is subjected to drainage water is more polluted than the northern shore, which indicates that these drains are considered as pollution source to the lake. The worst two drains were drain No11 and Bahr Nashart drain. For the management scenarios; first one is treating the domestic effluents with primary treatment, this scenario isn’t effective at all. Second one is using secondary treatment, this scenario solved BOD problem of the drain but cannot solve DO and NH3 problems. The third scenario is using surface wetland and does the same as the second scenario. The last scenario proposed is using biological biofilm techniques and this scenario the only one which solved all three problems. Key words, Water quality management, coastal lakes management, Lake Burullus, WASP, Assessment of lake Burullus, Lake Burullus drainage system, Bahr Nashart.