The Current Water Balance in Syria : Evaluating the potential contribution of Constructed Wetlands as a treatment plant of municipal wastewater in Al-Haffah

Abstract: The future projection of climate change suggests the strong need of improved systems to the re-source management systems. In Syria, the current water resource management systems are weak, and the country has no resilience to the scarcity of water resources in the region. In 2007 a drought has crippled the Syrian economy and impacted the life of millions of Syrian People, the devastating occurrence of the drought had larger impacts due to the lack of water resource management sys-tems and irresponsibility of use. This study investigates the current management systems that Syria has, and the supply and demand of the country, of which is aimed for with the term (water balance) that refer to the flow of water in and out of the system. Furthermore, a constructed wetland design is introduced as a system to treat municipal wastewater of the town Al-Haffah, located east of Latakia city of which is situated at the Mediterranean coast, on the Costal basin. All the data avail-able relevant to the investigation has been used in the case study, nevertheless some assumptions has been made due to lack of available data. The introduced system is later evaluated in regards of water need for agricultural purposes in Al-Haffah. The design with the assumed current value, in worst case scenario could save annually (48.57%) of the groundwater abstraction for agricultural purposes, Or (29.14%) of the total water demand for the agricultural practices in Al-Haffah. Whilst, in best case scenario, if two third of the required water for agriculture is met with rainfall the system saves (145.7%) of the assumed groundwater abstraction, Or (87.43%) of the total an-nual required water.