A Comparative Evaluation of Soil Characteristics at the 10th of Ramadan and El-Gabal El-Asfar, Egypt

El-Gabal El Asfar Village (GAV) and the 10th of Ramadan City (10RC) are two examples of the continued sewage effluent application east of Cairo city within the past century. In this study, a comparative analysis of the quality of selected effluents and soil profile was performed to elucidate the extent of soil degradation at both locations. The results indicated that these effluents had an assimilative nature and input sources (domestic and mixed domestic/industrial) with the pH ranging between 6.45 and 7.16 which was within the permissible limits for the use of treated wastewater in land reclamation. The majority of these effluents showed higher ammonium (NH4+)/nitrate (NO3−) ratio varying between 1.6 and 4.5 and the sequence of the dominance of cations and anions within these effluents was Na+ > Ca2+ > Mg2+ and Cl− > SO42− > HCO3− which reflect a NaCl (100