Assessing the Impact of Proposed Regulator’s Construction on Water Quality of Shatt Al-Arab River-Iraq

Abstract

The Shatt Al-Arab River, in southern Iraq, flows southeastwards through Basrah City to the Arabian Gulf. Seven creeks are branched off the river: Jubyla, Muftya, Robat, Khandek, Ashar, Khora, and Saraji, where they are affected by tidal phenomena. The change in the hydrological status of the river over the last decade has adversely affected the quality of the river's water. Urban sewage and industrial wastewater are usually discharged directly or indirectly into the river. The entire river's course is studied, starting at the point where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet in the Qurnah district and extending into the vicinity of the river's estuary. The use of the Shatt Al Arab River in modelling a planned regulator on the river is demonstrated as one of the solutions offered to address the deterioration of river water quality. Results showed a slight increase in organic nitrogen, nitrate, ammonia, organic phosphorus, inorganic phosphorus, and carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand by (4.76, 3.61, 7.23, 4.44, 2.76, and 12.27%), respectively, and a decrease in dissolved oxygen by 2.6% were because of trapping pollutants fed by rivers branches and cleaning process stopping that was caused by the tides. This increase is expected. It does not cause significant harm compared to the benefit expected from constructing the regulator because of the high decrease in total dissolved solids by 30.58% and phytoplankton by 80.7%. In addition, there are government efforts to prevent this pollution by establishing a system of conveyor pipelines to get rid of these pollutants. It is concluded that there is a great benefit to establishing a regulator.

Keywords

• HEC-RAS
• Proposed regulator
• Shatt Al Arab river modeling
• Water quality