JEDDAH, 18 June — From space, a few hundred kilometers above the desert, the smooth dark surface of the lake far below glistens in startling contrast to the dull khaki sands around it. Distance and the flare of prismatic colors flaring off its surface add a beauty that belies its innocent appearance.
The silence that hangs like a heavy shroud over the lake is broken by the sound of a distant approaching vehicle. It signals the approach of an advancing army that visits the mournful spot daily. On arrival, they jostle for position, disgorging their scarred metal bellies into the desert. Nothing grows there, no living thing moves.
Wreaths of kerosene vapor rise stinking from the lake while prismatic patterns dance on the thick layer of oils on the surface of dead water. In the hardening daylight, the metallic stillness of the surface is not the pure calm of still water but the sluggish torpor of a thickened polluted liquid that only resembles water. A covering of bilious green scum clings with tenacity to the shore and any object it touches.
This foul smelling lake is not the result of a few tankers quietly dumping waste in the desert. It extends over an area of 612,000 square meters and contains more than 2.5 million cubic meters; it never seems to grow smaller by evaporation. The oily scum on the surface may have an effect on that. These are not wild guesses but hard evidence compiled recently by Dr. Muhammad Qari of Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz University.
If the truth doesn’t make a substantial problem, then the input of some 50,000 cubic meters of waste pumped into the lake every day certainly does. Taken daily from the underground domestic storage tanks, it is only a tiny part of the 700,000 cubic meters discharged into the system every day. Impressive though the numbers are, they don’t begin to describe what is out of sight beneath the city.
“What should be a jewel,” wrote Mishaal Al-Sudairy last year about Jeddah, “is as far from a jewel as one can imagine. Whoever doubts this should walk near the Arbaeen Lagoon. A few deep breaths and you will understand my point very clearly.” The “Bride of the Red Sea” is sitting on a toxic puddle of her own creation — some 80 million cubic meters of contaminated sewage water, an environmental time bomb, which lies beneath the city.
This waste did not suddenly arrive; it has accumulated over time as a result of inadequate facilities for its disposal. Dr. Adil Bushnak, a member of the board of consultants of the Supreme Economic Council, pointed out that Jeddah’s current sewage network covers only 10 percent of the city and serves only 30 percent of a population of 2.6 million. The question is, why?
The situation is bad now. But with the population expanding at a conservative estimate of 4 percent — though some demographers say it is closer to 6 percent — things are only going to get worse. Currently out of sight, there are occasions when natural events force the otherwise invisible effluent out into public notice. Then, of course, there is a reaction.
In north Jeddah early this year, the streets in some of the smarter suburbs were suddenly awash with substances usually emptied from septic tanks. City officials were accused of apathy in enforcing regulations. Tanker drivers were blamed but the streets flowed with sewage. During a period of finger-pointing and angry language, the sun evaporated the liquid mess, the water table subsided and the status quo returned.
The underlying problems, however, remain and simply will not go away. Far from it. The mayor of Jeddah estimated that 1,000 trucks roam the streets daily, taking on waste to be dumped in the increasingly toxic lake. Each truck makes an average of three trips a day.
The pestilential brew in the lake is seeping into the city’s water table. Bore holes will be affected and winter’s heavy rains will — indeed, already have — brought the problem to the surface.
If the municipal authorities in Jeddah want a worst-case scenario to look at as an example of what can happen if a city takes no action in such circumstances, let them take a look at Mexico City. The Central Canal, by any estimates the most polluted waterway on the planet, has begun to re-cycle its toxic content into the food chain with farmers using the water to irrigate crops.
It couldn’t happen here... could it? It already has!
(This is the first of a two-part series on pollution in Jeddah.)
