Ban on heavy vehicles prevents NWC from pumping surface water

National Water Company officials say the ban on heavy vehicles to enter Jeddah during peak traffic hours prevents the company from pumping flowing water in Safa and Marwa districts.
Wastewater, groundwater and rising tides are flooding the districts, which have plagued each Jeddah for the past several weeks. About 200,000 inhabitants are affected.
Jerome Douziech, director general of NWC, said that the company is in charge of 18 districts in Jeddah and is managing the flooding. Other parts of the city is the responsibility of Jeddah Municipality, he said.
“We have some issues in some districts, it is true,” Douziech told Arab News. “Yesterday and the day before we met with more contractors to accelerate the work in Safa and normally we solve such issues in three days.”
Douziech said that some consumers use the wastewater network to discharge additional water, which is over the capacity.
Moreover, heavy truck ban during peak traffic hours prevents the NWC from sending tankers to pump the surface water immediately.
The failure to pump surface water was a recent development, he said.
Douziech said that Saudi Arabia has the highest per-capita of water consumption in the world and the company cannot serve the entire Jeddah population.
“We consume around 360 liters per inhabitant everyday,” Douziech said. “In Europe, where there is too much water, only half of this amount is consumed.
“It is an issue in the future because as the population is growing. We need to mitigate it and to be sure that we can deliver water to everyone,” he said.
The company has more than 4500 km of water network lines. It controls leakage on the daily basis and fixed more than 6,000 leakage since 2009. That saved more than S R40 million, he said.
He said that the current network is not enough to cover all Jeddah districts, leading many residents to still order water tankers from filling stations.
He added: “People are using tankers for two reasons; They either live in areas not covered by the water network, like in Obhor north Jeddah, for example. Or when some people consume water more than what can be delivered through the network. But Jeddah municipality will invest in 2013 more than SR 1 billion to make cover all the areas. We deliver almost 1 million cubic meters a day in the network but it is not enough to delver 100 percent of the demand, especially during Ramadan.”
A new strategic reservoir is being contracted in the Briman area. its capacity is more than 1.5 millions cubic meters, which is more than one day consumption.
Douziech said it is an investment that will cost more than 600 millions and will be ready in 18 months. This reservoir will ensure the delivering of water to Jeddah for 6 days even if there is some issue in the desalination plants.