JEDDAH, 11 July 2004 — The threat posed to oil installations has received much coverage in the international media. Comparatively little attention, especially in the local press, has been given to a threat to what many consider a vastly more important natural resource: water.

“If Jeddah’s desalination plant was to become inoperative for any reason, the city of Jeddah and all the surrounding communities that are dependent on it will run out of water in a matter of days,” said Dr. Amal Al-Iraqi, the chairwoman of Nafia Water.

Without water from the plant, there would be no fresh water from the taps, she said. “The water tankers that deliver the water to people’s homes and businesses will not have a filling source. Store shelves would be cleared of their stock by people frantically buying whatever fresh water they can find.”

An engineer at Jeddah’s desalination plant agrees. “Approximately 38,000 cubic meters of fresh water is produced everyday. Jeddah is 100 percent dependent on this plant for its fresh water. If anything were to happen to it, it would be a catastrophe,” he told Arab News.

Nafia Water in association with Nymphea Water, a French-based company, believe that they have an answer whose benefits go beyond making the water supply safer from attack.

“The answer is tapping underwater fresh water springs which are in abundance in the Red Sea and all over the world. We have the technology to do it,” Al-Iraqi said.

Water shortages because of dry weather or man’s stress on the environment are common, with many countries unaware of the submarine fresh water springs along their sea front.

“From a very early stage, Greek sailors used to collect fresh water supplies from submarine fresh water springs with upturned and ballasted amphoras. Originally, those springs were mostly land-based and then became immersed as a result of land mass collapses or sea level rises.

“The fact that the spring is submerged does not stop it from flowing. It just becomes an underwater spring, which simply needs to be tapped. We now have the technology in Saudi Arabia to tap the thousands of submerged fresh water springs in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf,” Al-Iraqi said.

Once a water source is located by way of aerial or marine surveys, the water is analyzed and data is collected such as flow rate, salinity, and temperature. It works in much the same way as the Greek amphoras.

The full system, conceived by Pierre Becker and Thierry Carlin with assistance from Nymphea water engineers, was first successfully tested on a submarine spring close to the French-Italian border, 800 meters from the coast and 36 meters deep. The results showed that the freshwater flowed at a rate of 80 liters per second during the summer of 2003 and between 120 to 150 liters per second at other times. The salinity was less than 1.4 grams per liter and the average temperature was 17 degrees Celsius.

The capture system was composed of four parts, a six-meter diameter “fountain” where the fresh water comes out at sea level. The capturing unit, called a “tulip” for its shape, is 10 meters high and is fixed on the base over the spring thereby sealing it, preventing the freshwater from mixing with the saltwater. A 250mm flexible hose joins the tulip with the fountain.

The technology can be used to supply water for many different types of consumer. “Water from these springs can be bottled for sale, as an example of commercial use, or can be harnessed on a larger, more industrial scale to provide a modern city with fresh water at a quarter of the cost of desalination,” Dr. Al-Iraqi said.

According to Nymphea Water, their system offers numerous advantages such as access to a renewable natural source of fresh water, a system that is based on a natural phenomenon, as well as unobtrusive facilities that blend with the environment.

“Our process has no negative impact on the ecosystem and is easily installed and rapidly productive,” Dr. Amal concluded.