Shafdan Dan Region Reclamation — Soil-Aquifer Treatment for Negev Irrigation

The Shafdan (Dan Region) plant near Rishon LeZion treats municipal wastewater from roughly 2.5 million residents of the greater Tel Aviv area. After conventional secondary treatment, the effluent is spread across recharge basins where it percolates through natural sand layers of the coastal aquifer for about six months — a process called soil-aquifer treatment (SAT) that removes pathogens, organic matter and other contaminants through physical, chemical and biological action in the soil itself.
Recovery wells extract the reclaimed water, which Mekorot (Israel's national water company) pumps roughly 100 km south via the 'Third Line to the Negev' for unrestricted agricultural irrigation; more than 60% of irrigation water used in the Negev desert now originates from Shafdan. Nationally, Israel reclaims an estimated 85-90% of its municipal wastewater for agriculture — the highest reuse rate of any country — with the Dan Region system alone contributing roughly 130-140 million m³ of reclaimed water per year. Biogas from anaerobic digestion of sludge is captured on-site and supplies about 80% of the facility's own electricity demand.
The scheme has operated and been progressively expanded since the 1970s, and its SAT approach is cited internationally (including in EU-funded programmes such as SUWANU Europe) as a reference model for using natural soil filtration ahead of unrestricted reuse. Published sources document the water-quantity and reuse-rate outcomes in detail; they do not, however, report a formal greenhouse-gas balance or biodiversity assessment for the recharge basins, so this practice is evaluated conservatively on those dimensions.

Read the full analysis: https://www.mekorot-int.com/blog/project/shepdan/