ManagedAQUIFER RECHARGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East operates some of the largest managed aquifer recharge schemes on Earth: the Liwa strategic reserve banks roughly 26 million m³ of desalinated water through about 300 wells, Saudi Arabia counts 339 recharge dams and Oman 43, and the region-adjacent Shafdan system has reclaimed over 100 million m³ of effluent per year since 1977. Yet the practice had never been audited scheme by scheme against the performance evidence actually on record. Geologic® conducted that audit: a 22-scheme inventory across the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant and the arid margins, disciplined by rigorously verified sourcing.

The audit treats the sparseness of the evidence as its central finding. Most operating schemes have no verified quantitative performance record, and no full-scale operational recovery-efficiency record exists for any Gulf aquifer storage and recovery scheme; the only measured Gulf recovery data are pilot-scale, 85 to 90% at Liwa. The review pairs the documented failure modes with the design levers documented practice supports, distils siting and design guidance for arid systems, and sets a seven-item agenda led by release of the operating data flagship schemes already collect.