Assessing the potential of wastewater reuse in Palestine using business processes re-engineering coupled with value chain analysis as a tool: The case of Nablus Governorate

Water and environmental issues are the trend of this century due to the reduced amounts of drinkable water and safe environment to the future generations. Palestine is one of the countries that suffers badly from both issues and need drastic measurement to solve them. The water unavailability in Palestine and the increase in demand forces the authorities and the scientists to search for new sources of water, one of these sources is the reclaimed wastewater which not only reduces the amount of drinkable water used for agriculture and industries but also solve an environmental hazard of polluting the ground water when running un treated in the wadis among other threats. Thus, for an efficient study of the reclaimed wastewater in Palestine , the reclaimed wastewater reuse is addressed not only as an environmental necessity but also as an economic commodity in order to identify all resulted barriers against it in order to facilitate developing this sector after the many failures that were faced. Two main modern economic concepts are coupled in order to cover those objectives which are the Value Chain Analysis (VCA) and the Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR). Coupling these two concepts gives an efficient assessment tool for the barriers against reclaimed wastewater reuse . Several field researches, meetings, and workshop were conducted in a practical approach to insure the reliability of the results that showed that the economical and social barriers are the main barriers in the reclamation sector. The main results showed that neither the age, sex or education is related to the acceptability of reclaimed wastewater only the status of the person whether he is married and provide to his family or not is the main factor. Their results was used as input for a VCA model for the reclaimed wastewater in order to assess the current situation of the reclaimed wastewater sector which was found to be weak and lack the proper support and organization. The result of this model was introduced to BPR methodology in order to re-engineer the sector which gave a new organized entities model that should be enforced to reach a successful sector, and determine the proper solutions for the identified barriers. From an engineering point of view, the increase in the acceptability toward the reclaimed waste water will increase the profits for the farmers and the suppliers of the fresh water and the reclaimed waste water, which would happen if new re-engineered model for the reclaimed wastewater was used with the proper lows that regulates the use of water and reclaimed waste water. The researcher recommends to have wide scale awareness campaign regarding the reclaimed waste water, also to invest more money regarding the support of the reclaimed wastewater sector and to apply the re-engineered model of the reclaimed waste water sector in order to enhance the new sector. and to encourage the new projects in this area that will enhance the agriculture and provide new work opportunities.