When he first arrived in the region to take over his position as governor of Makkah province, which includes Jeddah and Taif, Prince Khaled Al-Faisal began a series of meetings with the elite and residents of the Red Sea coastal city to listen to their complaints and suggestions aimed at putting an end to all issues of the city.
The governor began his mission by making serious attempts to resolve the four main problems. He also started to plan for the development of Jeddah with a view to making it a cosmopolitan city, an easily accessible gate to the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah, and a real tourist attraction in addition to its economic and trade advancement.
He began his work by establishing a number of departments and specialized agencies at the governorate to help facilitate his assignment. He initiated an autonomous agency for the affairs of development and added a number of new administrations. These included the department of studies and public relations, the department to follow up the implementation of verdicts, which succeeded in executing 18,000 rulings representing 90 percent of the verdicts, and the department to follow up the implementation of development projects.
The governor involved the society in formulating a 10-year development strategy, which was reduced to only four years after residents started calling for a speedy implementation.
Khaled Al-Faisal was keen to involve the concerned government departments and the civic societies in the region in the implementation of the development projects in Jeddah. His four years of serious work resulted in the complete drying up of the sewage lake, which the residents of Jeddah called the “Musk Lake.” The lake was not only emptied from its dirty water, but its environmental hazards were forever silenced. The lake's water has been recycled to be used for irrigation purposes.
The garbage dumping area was totally removed from its old place at Braiman district in east Jeddah, the production of water was increased by 100 percent to reach 1.1 million cubic meters daily from the previous 550,000 cubic meters, and an integrated sewage system consisting of home connections has been realized.
The ambitions of the governor exceeded the demands of the residents to include the Haramain Railway project, a new airport, a new sports stadium, the extension of the Corniche, the development of roads and tunnels, quick drainage of flood and rainwater and annihilation of all random areas.
 

The sewage lake was named the Musk Lake by Jeddah residents to mock its nasty smell. The lake represented a real threat to the city, as its mud dam might collapse any moment submerging the nearby districts of east Jeddah. The lake was established mid-1980s to the east of the Jeddah-Makkah Expressway as a temporary solution to the sewage problem until the sewage network was completed. Every day more than 1,200 water tankers would empty their water loads in the lake, making it the largest artificial lake in the Kingdom at 125 meters above sea level.
The drying up process was carried out in stages, according to CEO of the National Water Company (NWC) Luay Al-Musallam. He said the first thing the company did after receiving the location was to conduct a survey study, which showed that the total area of the lake was 2.5 million square meters. The lake contained about 10 million cubic meters of dirty water and was eight meters deep.
He said a SR95 million-contract was signed with a specialized company to undertake the work of drying. He added that an international expert house was also contracted to study and deal with the environmental and ecological effects of the lake.
Al-Musallam said his company also started to operate the water treatment plant near the lake at a full capacity of 60,000 cubic meters daily and pumped large quantities of the lake's water to the vaporization lakes and the treatment plant via a transporting line with a diameter of 60 centimeters.
“When the company received an official report from the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment that the bottom of the lake was ready and void of any pollutants, we extended the length of the transporting line to reach 25 km and expanded its capacity to 125,000 cubic meters of water daily,” he said.
Three months later, on Oct. 16, 2010, the minister of Electricity and Water announced that the Musk Lake had been completely dried up and also said all the vaporization lakes were empty of any water.
While the lake was being dried up, the Makkah governorate was busy making studies to turn the site into a tourist area.
 

The final closing down of the garbage dumping area from its location in Braiman district has put an end to the predicament of east Jeddah residents that continued for 27 years, during which they were facing the risks of pollution.
Director of the department of cleaning at the municipality Yousuf Khallaf said the garbage dumping site had an area of 2.3 million square meters and that the closure was done according to scientific methods of international standards to avoid any future environmental or health risks.
The location was used as a dumping area from 1980 to 2007. It used to receive about 4,000 tons of garbage every day. “The emitting gases and the bad smell constituted continuous hazards to the nearby residents,” he said.
Khallaf said the garbage dumping area was closed down using debris constructions and other insulating material while gases were removed using a special gas-collecting system.
He said about a million square meters of the area of the old dumping site would be used to construct a golf track and a number of public parks.
Khallaf revealed that the Jeddah Development and Urban Regeneration Company was making studies to use the gases collected from the dumping area to generate electricity, which will provide the municipality with annual revenues of SR30 million for 15 years. He said the process of gas collection would be completed in April 2012.
 

The NWC has succeeded in increasing the quantities being pumped to Jeddah every day from 550,000 cubic meters before the company was established in 2008 to 1.1 million cubic meters in 2011.
An official report by the company read more than 60 percent of the east and north Jeddah districts had been supplied with steady flow of water. The report expected the ratio to rise to about 80 percent before the end of the current year.
The report read 950,000 cubic meters of water were being pumped through the water networks, while 150,000 cubic meters were being distributed by water tankers. It revealed that in the light of the increasing demand, water had been rationed for some districts.
The report also claimed the continuous search to discover and fix the water leakage points had greatly reduced the quantity of waste. “This work has resulted in saving about 11 million cubic meters of water until the end of November 2011,” it added.
 

According to Al-Musallam, the construction of a proper sewage system in Jeddah was delayed by more than 30 years. He said the city would have an integrated sewage system by 2015.
He said during the coming four years, sewage connections would be extended to a total of 132,000 homes. “The project began in the final quarter of 2011 with connections being extended to 8,000 homes in a number of districts,” he said, adding that 52,000 new home connections would be made in the first quarter of 2012.
Al-Musallam said the sewage system would consist of home connections, tunnels, and branch and main networks.
He said about 1,500 km of main and 1,945 km of branch networks were constructed at the cost of more than SR1.15 billion.
Al-Musallam said Jeddah had four sewage recycling plants including one near the airport, a second in Al-Khomra area, a third in Al-Balad district and the fourth in Al-Ruwais.