Socio-Economical and Environmental Impact for the Agricultural Use of Wastewater in the Wadi Nar Catchment/ Dead Sea Region
Marwan Ghanem

Abstract
A total of 237 questionnaires were filled out and analyzed for farmers and consumers in Wadi Nar catchmnet for the socio-economic impact of using the treated wastewater for agricultural purposes. The majority of the respondents replied that there is a shortage of water in the area and they suffer as a result in their households. Health and environmental risks were anticipated to be the two major concerns in both cases. The majority of the respondents are willing to use restricted water for irrigation but were reluctant on using unrestricted water for the same purpose. About 79% of the respondents replied that they were not willing to use unrestricted wastewater in case there is no fresh water. About 66% of the sample do not pay anything for disposing their wastewater while the average cost for those who do is about 473 NIS/year ranging from 50 to 1600. It can be concluded that damage to the groundwater and the economy are not major concerns in both cases with health risks are thought to be a threat to many whether treated or not. Respondents believe that the main factor that influences the consumption of products irrigated with treated wastewater is the fear from health risks. More than half of the respondents refuse to pay for fruits and vegetables irrigated with treated wastewater. The average of the BOD and COD in sampled wastewater is 185 and 320.6 mg/L respectively which reflect the dangerous impact of using this wastewater for irrigation. These amounts reflects there harmful effect of their use in irrigation. According to SAR average of 19.4, the irrigation of wastewater will cause harmful effect to the consumers of the plants and crops when it is used for agriculture. This results matches with the result of both the analyzed questionnaires of farmers and consumers.

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