Page 88 - Arabian Studies (V)

78 Arabian Studies V

6. Water Resources
i
The present consumption of water for all purposes in Qatar
amounts to 58.5 x lOHn.3 per annum made up of 43.4 x 106m.3 for
agriculture and 15.1 x lO^m.3 for domestic and industrial purposes.
Of this total 48.1 x lO^.3 or 82 per cent is provided by ground-
H
water from the northern groundwater province and the remainder
by sea water distillation at Doha. Domestic and industrial
consumption amounts to 45,000 m.Vday giving a per capita
consumption of 337 litres per day of which 63 per cent is met by
desalinised sea water. Agricultural consumption is almost entirely
concentrated in the northern districts.
On the basis of five years of reliable records of rainfall, recharge
and consumption, it has been found possible to put forward a
provisional water balance of Qatar (Pike et al., 1975; Parker and
Pike, 1976) and which may be summarised as follows.

I • WATER BALANCE OF QATAR

Groundwater Net Extraction Depletion
Province & or
Recharge Agriculture Municipal Outflow increment
Zone Recharge to storage
Northern
Province
A 6.7 21.46 2.00 —16.8
I B 1.3 1.56 0.14 1.40 — 1.9
C 4.9 5.70 2.89 2.00 — 5.7
E 4.7 5.68 1.48 0.75 — 3.3

Sub-total 17.6 34.40 4.51 6.25 —27.7

Southern
Province
D 5.3 0.72 0.10 0.75 + 3.7
F 2.0 7.56 0.02 0.75 — 6.3
G 3.1 0.09 0.75 + 2.3
H 3.0 0.67 1.00 + 1.3
! 1 0.4 0.25 + 0.1
I
J 0.2 0.25 + 0.2
Sub-total 14.2 9.04 0.12 3.75 + 1.3

Total 31.8 43.44 4.63 10.00 —26.4

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