title: Extended use of grey water for irrigating home gardens in an arid environment.
abstract: The use of treated grey water (GW) for home gardens, peri-urban agriculture and landscaping is becoming popular in many water stressed countries such as Oman. This study aims to investigate the treatment efficacy, health and chemical concerns, cost-benefits and maintenance protocol of a GW treatment system as well as the effect of irrigation with GW on crop yield. Therefore, a decentralized homemade GW treatment system was installed in a newly constructed house in Muscat, Oman and studied over a 2-year period. The treated GW was found to be suitable for irrigation as per Omani standards. GW when mixed with kitchen effluent substituted the use of nutrient supplements for plants and did not show any harmful chemical or biological contamination. The capital cost of the system was around US $980, and the annual operating cost was US $78 with annual income and savings from the system being around US $572 indicating a payback period of nearly 2 years. It was found that the system required simple but regular maintenance particularly cleaning of the top layer of the filter. It can be concluded from this study that such a GW system should be technically, economically and environmentally feasible in Oman. Also, wider acceptance by the general public to the idea of GW reuse will help in mitigating the water shortage problem of the country to some extent.
authors.affiliation: Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box: 34, Al-Khod, 123, Muscat, Oman. abdrahim@squ.edu.om.
authors.forename: Abdulrahim M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Al-Ismaili
authors.affiliation: Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box: 34, Al-Khod, 123, Muscat, Oman.
authors.forename: Mushtaque
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.affiliation: Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box: 34, Al-Khod, 123, Muscat, Oman.
authors.forename: Ahmed
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Al-Busaidi
authors.affiliation: Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box: 34, Al-Khod, 123, Muscat, Oman.
authors.forename: Seif
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Al-Adawi
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.
authors.forename: Roman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tandlich
authors.affiliation: Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box: 34, Al-Khod, 123, Muscat, Oman.
authors.forename: Mohammed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Al-Amri
mesh_terms: D000072506:Gardens; D006801:Humans; D009850:Oman; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid; D014867:Water; D018508:Water Purification
chemical_list: D014867:Water
keywords: Decentralized; Economy; Efficiency; Grey water reuse; Homemade; Irrigation