Marrakech Treated-Wastewater Reuse — Tertiary Effluent for Golf Course & Palm Grove Irrigation (Morocco)

Marrakech's historic Palmeraie and its growing golf-tourism sector compete for scarce water in a semi-arid region where the city was also losing close to 40% of its supply to network leaks. To ease pressure on groundwater and the Oued Tensift, the national utility ONEE, the local utility RADEEMA, the Moroccan government, the regional governor and golf-resort developers agreed a joint wastewater treatment and reuse scheme.
A tertiary treatment plant and dedicated transmission network to the resorts became operational in 2012, built with a target capacity of about 24,000 m3/day for up to 18 golf courses and city landscaping. The plant now produces roughly 33 million m3/year of treated effluent, used to irrigate the palm grove and connected golf courses. Resorts are billed for at least 80% of the volume they originally requested regardless of actual consumption, a deliberate design to make reclaimed water the cheaper option relative to groundwater abstraction.
Adoption has been partial: peer-reviewed assessment of the scheme found only about 8 of the 18 golf courses actually use the reclaimed water, with managers citing recurring clogging of drip and sprinkler systems, elevated salinity, and uneven turf growth as reasons for reverting to other sources.
The World Bank's Water Scarce Cities Initiative has documented Marrakech's scheme as a case study in matching non-potable reuse to urban water scarcity, while also noting the technical adoption barriers that limit how much of the built capacity is actually used.

Read the full analysis: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/water/marrakech-solved-water-riddle-through-wastewater