Control of sea-water intrusion by salt-water pumping: Coast of Oman

A shallow alluvial coastal aquifer in the Batinah area of Oman, with sea-water intrusion that extends several kilometres inland, has been studied experimentally, analytically and numerically. The water table is proved to have a trough caused by intensive pumping from a fresh groundwater zone and evaporation from the saline phreatic surface. Resistivity traverses perpendicular to the shoreline indicated no fresh groundwater recharge into the sea. Using an analytical Dupuit-Forchheimer model, developed for the plain part of the catchment, explicit expressions for the water table, sharp interface location and stored volume of fresh water are obtained. It is shown that by the pumping of salt water from the intruded part of the aquifer, this intrusion can be mitigated. Different catchment sizes, intensities of fresh groundwater pumping, evaporation rates, water densities, sea level, incident fresh water level in the mountains and hydraulic conductivity are considered. SUTRA code is applied to a hypothetical case of a leaky aquifer with line sinks modeling fresh water withdrawal and evaporation. The numerical code also shows that pumping of saline water can pull the dispersion zone back to the shoreline.