NWC claims pipeline leaks reduced

The National Water Company says that the percentage of wasted de-ionized water, also known as de-mineralized water, distributed through pipes in Jeddah has decreased to 18 percent following the use of helium-leak testing techniques in water networks.
Academia and experts disagree. They estimate that 40 percent of the water is wasted. The daily amount of pumped water is one million cubic meters, of which 600,000 cubic meters reaches Jeddah households. This means that about 400,000 cubic meters of desalinated water is wasted, they said.
“We have signed contracts to replace the old parts of the network in order to minimize the volume of wasted water as much as possible,” said engineer Abdullah Al-Assaf, director of the Jeddah Business Unit at the company.
“By using the helium-leak testing technique to detect and repair the damaged parts of the old network, we have managed to minimize the volume of wasted water,” he added.
The National Water Company has implemented four contracts to transfer water from the reservoirs to networks across the city. The contracts include a pipeline to transfer water to Al-Faisaliah at a cost of SR 99 million and another one that extends from Al-Faisaliah to Breeman at a cost of SR 93 million.
Abd Al-Malik Al-Junaidi, a member of the municipal council and former dean of the Faculty of Engineering, told a local newspaper that the leakage of desalinated water is an environmental and health hazard of sorts, as drainage on a daily basis raises ground water levels. “There is a chance that sewage water might mix with desalinated water, thus increasing pressure on sewage networks,” he added.
“It is unfortunate that the National Water Company and Jeddah Secretariat do not give accurate information on the issue,” he said. He added that old networks are rusty and worn out because the pipes are made of iron, adding, “Global companies use plastic pipes when implementing water network projects.”
He said that underground infrastructure plans are randomly constructed. “Any new engineering plans should have a detailed diagram or sketches to show the course of the pipes, but this is not the case in our city.”
He said: “A radical solution to the problem of increased pressure on networks is to reduce the daily wastage rates of desalinated water through the continuous maintenance of networks.”