الفهرس 
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The coastal area of Nile Delta is one of the most inhabited regions in Egypt and it continues to grow in population and a variety of development initiatives forcing the search for additional and sustainable water resources to meet the demands. Thus, groundwater provides a good source of water that can be incorporated to our finite supply of fresh water, especially in regions where it can be challenging to use the surface water.
West New Damietta power plant relies heavily on groundwater abstraction from the Quaternary Nile Delta aquifer to meet the high purity demineralized water requirements for boiler feed required to generate electricity to meet the country’s significant future development ambitions.
This study required the use of multidisciplinary techniques such as geophysical methods, hydrochemical analysis, and remote sensing to achieve the main goal of exploring the coastal aquifer, identifying subsurface lithology, water-bearing layers, and confirming the suitability of using groundwater, as well as assessing the environmental significant hazards that may pose threats to the power plant.
The most extensively utilized hydro-geophysical methods for locating and exploring groundwater resources are vertical electrical sounding (VES) and transient electromagnetic (TEM).Therefore, a total of seventeen VES and five TEM soundings were carried out in the study area to determine the subsurface lithology, water-bearing layers and groundwater salinity. The geophysical results identified five geoelectric layers. The first geoelectric layer has a resistivity of 1–7.9 Ω m and a thickness range of 7–9 m. The second layer has a resistivity of 0.9–4.4 Ω m and a thickness range of 7–8 m. The third layer is 10–21 m thick with a resistivity value of 0.5–2 Ω m. The fourth layer, which is thicker (29 to 42 m), has a resistivity of 0.7–3 Ω m, while the last layer has a resistivity of 1.7–9 Ω m.
In order to determine the hydrogeochemical characteristics of the groundwater and evaluating its quality to assess its suitability for use, water samples were taken from seven production water wells in the study area, with a total depth of 120 m to 140 m and chemically analyzed. The results showed that the groundwater in the area is brackish since the minimum and maximum TDS values are 7035 and 7735 mg/l, respectively. The PH value ranges from 7.82 to 8.1, indicating alkalinity. High concentrations of major ions were recorded in the eastern part of the power plant, wells 5, 6 and 7, with the exception of potassium, sulfate and magnesium. Moreover, all groundwater is NaCl dominant, implying dissolution from evaporates or seawater intrusion.
In addition, to assess the possible environmental risks that might threaten the plant’s safety resulting from natural processes or man-made activities, Two Landsat images acquired on 31 May 1984, and 31 October 2022, respectively were used to detect landuse/landcover surrounding the area and to map the change of shorelines and land cover during 38 years. The landuse/land cover map shows four main classes; vegetation, bare soil, water body and urban area. According to the results obtained from a comparison of the landuse/land cover maps for 1984 and 2022, the vegetation area increased from 222.439 Km2 in 1984 to 254.696 Km2 in 2022, water body shows a general decrease from 156.147 km2 in 1984 to 149.256 km2 in 2022, whereas the bare soil decreased by 22.31 % from 147.122 km2 to 27.498 km2 and the urban area increased by 17.58 %. All of these changes are the result of anthropogenic influences. Furthermore, the shoreline change map shows that there are no threats to the study area since the shoreline has been stable with little accretion over the 38-year study period. The main dominant process along the coastline is accretion.