Sewage removal cost climbs due to truck ban

The ban on heavy trucks during peak traffic hours has increased sewage removal costs and raised the specter of further pollution from overflowing waste tanks in some of the city's neighborhoods.
The cost for a 25-ton capacity sewage truck has now risen from about SR 130 to SR 200 in some areas.
From getting up to seven trips a day, drivers say they are now only running two to three trips a day, mostly at night. This has caused congestion of trucks at the city's two waste treatment plants - at Al-Khumrah in the south and close to the airport in the north.
There are about 2,000 tankers, driven mostly by Africans, providing this service in the city.
Less than 10 percent of the city's sewage is removed by tankers. About 90 percent of approximately 800,000 cubic meters of sewage is absorbed into the city's underground storage tanks. There has already been contamination of the city's groundwater. The National Water Company has started to lay pipelines for the removal of sewage, with the first phase currently underway in north Jeddah.
A tanker driver, Omar, who did not want to reveal his full name, said: “Earlier I used to make six and sometimes seven trips during the day and at night but now I am confined only to two trips, occasionally three, but not more than that.” Earlier drivers used to discharge sewage in the infamous Musk Lake but after the 2009 floods, it was stopped.
Mohammed Ali Sindi, a Pakistani building guard in Aziziah, said that the reduced operations have resulted in sewage surfacing in the toilets of residents.
A Saudi student, Badr Jifry, said he supports the ban because it has reduced traffic congestion in the city. Mustafa Sabir, an Egyptian expatriate, also expressed a similar view.
The sewage removal business is one of the alleged cover-up industries in the city. Transportation has been earmarked for Saudization, but Saudis, according to reports, do not want to take up this work. This is because drivers have to remove covers of septic tanks and connect the hoses to remove the foul-smelling waste.