Jeddah-based Suido Kiko Middle East has been tasked with cleaning out the Briman Sewage Lake, as it is formally known, after it was rumored to be close to bursting its banks during last November’s deadly floods in the city.
The company signed the contract this week with Jeddah Development and Urban Regeneration Co. (JDURC) to “design, build, operate and maintain” a pumping station for the lake at Wadi Al-Asla east of Jeddah. Nizar Kammourie, chief executive officer of Suido Kiko Middle East, said the company will install up to 10 pumps by the Musk Lake to extract water and take it to a nearby plant where it will be treated along with the daily loads that it receives from the city.
“Our plant capacity is 60,000 cubic meters per day (m3/day). We will take between 40,000 and 50,000 m3/day from the lake and 10,000 and 20,000 m3/day from the daily loads. Once the actual pumping starts, it will take less than 300 days to dry up the lake,” Kammourie said. He said two parallel pipelines, each 900m long, would be laid to connect the lake with the plant. Construction of the pumping stations, laying of the pipelines and other related work is expected to take four months. However, pumping will start after one month as certain measures need to be implemented before the station is permanently put in place.
Suido Kiko Middle East has already built a wastewater treatment plant near the lake that has been operational since last year.
It is currently treating 40,000 to 50,000 m3/day of domestic waste, which the Jeddah municipality is sending every day by trucks from various parts of the city. The wastewater plant was built under a contract with the Jeddah municipality. It applies the most advanced sewage water treatment technology from Japan, called MBR (membrane bioreactor). It is also said to be the largest facility of its kind in the entire Middle East.
How to treat Jeddah’s sewage water and reuse it effectively remains one of the major issues affecting the city. The new contract will lead to the treatment of 10 million cubic meters of Musk Lake water collected over the years.
Kammourie said the treated water would be supplied to JDURC, which will use it for irrigation purposes in the Wadi Al-Asla area.
The next step after draining out the lake water will be to remove the sludge, estimated to be something between 500,000 and one million cubic meters in size. It will take nearly a year to complete the job.
There will be a separate bid for this. Kammourie said his company would be one of the bidders once the tender is rolled out.
