JEDDAH: The Jeddah Municipality has signed three contracts worth SR95 million on Saturday with specialized companies to clean up the “Musk Lake,” an open, seeping body of raw sewage east of Jeddah, according to Ibraheem Kutubkhana, deputy mayor for constructions and projects.
City officials did not disclose the names of the three companies, but said the municipality has instructed these companies to complete the work within six months.
The new projects would help in pumping out 90,000 cubic meters of raw, untreated sewage per day, which is three times more than what is poured into the lake by sewage trucks each day, Kutubkhana said.
The lake contains 10 million cubic meters of raw sewage. The water will be treated and turned into gray water — water that is safe for agricultural use but not for drinking.
Currently around 30,000 cubic meters of sewage is treated in Jeddah daily.
“By the end of the three new projects, the treated water (output) will reach 60,000 cubic meters a day,” Kutubkhana noted. He said there is no threat of the lake flooding.
More than 800 tanker trucks dump raw sewage into the lake daily. Most of Jeddah’s sewage is handled by on-site septic systems that require fleets of trucks to periodically empty.
The city also dumps untreated sewage directly into the Red Sea because the infrastructure is inadequate to handle the amount of waste produced by residents.
