Water security for Kuwait

Water security depends on the availability of enough water to meet the demand of all consumption sectors at all times. These conditions are hardly met in water rich countries, as the hydrological cycle is not fully reliable. In arid countries, such as Kuwait, where there is no enough natural fresh water, water security is generally based on enough storage capacity to cover strategic and seasonal variations in consumption, non-conventional water supplies and utilization of treated wastewater. The progressive increase in water demand in these countries calls for proper management to flatten the annual curve of the water demand. In this paper, issues related to the strategic storage capacity are discussed, i.e. amount of fresh water required to meet the demand of the State of Kuwait at all times. It is estimated to be 24% of the annual normal consumption of Kuwait. Such a huge amount of water cannot be accommodated in ground level reservoirs without continuous treatment. The only feasible option is to identify a suitable ground water aquifer for storing such quantities of water, using artificial recharge technology. The adoption of such scheme will overcome the problem of seasonal variation in demand. The increase during the high demand periods can be compensated form the storing aquifer and during the low demand, the same aquifer can be used to store the surplus available quantities of water.