Last month my husband and I went house hunting in the Alkhobar and Dammam areas. The experience proved to be an eye-opener in ways we’d never imagined. After viewing the properties we asked the usual questions. “Did the buildings have electricity? Water? Telephone?” In every case, the answer to our questions was “yes,” even though the houses were part of new developments. Frankly, we were quite surprised that getting a fixed phone line was no longer an issue. In the past, the lack of a telephone, sometimes for years, used to be the greatest burden when moving to a new home.
The utility situation seemed too good to be true. We had a nagging feeling that something was missing. And then, while walking around outside one of these new real estate developments, it hit me, “Look, there are no manholes in the street,” I told my husband. “These houses aren’t connected to the municipal sewage line.”
It was a terrible revelation. Checking back with all the real estate offices, we soon learned that not one of the new houses we’d viewed had a connection to the area’s water treatment network. In Dammam and Alkhobar’s newest districts no sewage lines have been laid. The property developers told us that at the front of each new building in these subdivisions, two underground concrete tanks have been built to collect the raw sewage. The liquid part of the sewage is to be allowed to seep into the ground and, perhaps twice a year, the remaining semi-solid waste has to be pumped out of the tanks and trucked to the local sewage treatment plant. Disgusting!
This sewage disposal situation is practically beyond belief. After seeing the problems created in Jeddah by the lack of an adequate wastewater treatment network, one would have thought that the municipal authorities across the Kingdom would have been wary of falling into the same stinky trap, but obviously not.
In fact, according to a new report, “Water Market Middle East,” Saudi Arabia’s cities are practically awash in waste. The Kingdom currently has the capacity to treat only 24 liters of wastewater per capita per day. While the potable water coverage for Saudi Arabia is about 85 percent, the sewerage coverage is only 40 percent!
“SR50 billion will need to be invested over the next decade to improve the Kingdom’s inadequate and overloaded wastewater facilities,” according to the report compiled by Global Water Intelligence (GWI) Editors Peter Allison and Christopher Gasson.
The report claims that wastewater treatment capacity will need to be increased by nearly 450 million gallons per day (two million m3/day) to meet the Kingdom’s growing needs. The associated investment costs for wastewater treatment of SR50 billion compare with spending on fresh water projects of SR52.5 billion. The figures cover the period 2005-15.
The cost estimates are based on the value of current proposed projects in Saudi Arabia and adjustments were made to take account of future schemes and any delays that could affect the implementation. The true investment figure for wastewater projects was SR64 billion before slippage and delays were factored in.
While fresh water services are far from perfect in Saudi Arabia, wastewater collection and treatment is the nation’s Achilles’ heel. The Kingdom’s 40 percent sewerage coverage is low by international standards and not all of the wastewater that is collected is actually treated. Jeddah has a 10 million cubic meter holding lagoon for wastewater.
Unfortunately, there is no regulatory authority to compel the Kingdom to treat its sewage, but urbanization may be the driver to force an improvement in wastewater management.
“Saudi Arabia may find that a public health crisis forces them to introduce tougher standards for wastewater treatment,” wrote the GWI editors. “Such an outbreak is almost a certainty in the context of the rate of urbanization in the Kingdom. The greater the population density, the greater the public health risk associated with inadequate sewerage and treatment facilities.”
A big problem with getting sewage networks and wastewater treatment up and running is that there is no history of adequate residential wastewater tariffs. That is why it is essential to manage the water cycle better and promote reuse of treated water. Right now in Saudi Arabia, wastewater is perhaps the most under-used and ill-used asset. It is underused because so little of it is properly recycled. Through the centralization of sewage collection, wastewater could actually generate significant cash flow and contribute to the economy of the Kingdom. For example, treated wastewater could be made available for industrial applications. New filtration techniques used in water recycling are capable of delivering ultra-pure process water. Certain industries currently cannot be located in the Kingdom due to the water shortfall. Treatment of residential wastewater could generate new industrial opportunities.
It is also about time that people actually begin to pay more of the real cost of the water they use in the Kingdom. GWI found that the estimated cost of producing potable water in Saudi Arabia is about SR7 per cubic meter. The average water tariff is only SR0.11 per cubic meter. Less water down the drain would mean less wastewater needing treatment.
