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Friday 25 April 2008

Jeddah Headed Toward Ecological Disaster: Expert

<http://www.arabnews.com/services/print/print.asp?artid=109296&d=25&m=4&y=2008&hl=Jeddah%20Headed%20Toward%20Ecological%20Disaster:%20Expert>

Roger Harrison, Arab News -

JEDDAH, 25 April 2008 - Jeddah can expect an ecological disaster this year. Far from taking care of the environment, the city is systematically destroying itself by failing to take seriously the need to install an efficient and modern sewage processing plant to process its waste.

Such is the view of a well-placed environmental specialist, who requested he not be named. However, the facts seem to support his contention.

There is, not far from downtown Jeddah and just south of the King Faisal Naval Base, a two-meter diameter pipe at a depth of 50 meters below the surface of the Red Sea. Buried in the coral foreshore about 25 meters below the surface, the pipe angles down to the full 50-meter depth where several vents - some five meters apart or so along the 50-meter seabed section - spew filth. More effluent disgorges from the open end of the pipe. It pumps out, our informant estimates, about 600,000 cubic meters of raw sewage a day. The outfall is jet black; it comes out under tremendous pressure powered by a powerful pumping station - the Qurma pumping station - in south Jeddah.

The pumping station has powerful machinery, maintained on a regular basis. It has to be; the water back-pressure at 50 meters depth is about 1,008 tons over the diameter of a two-meter pipe. Not only is this discharge of raw domestic and commercial waste environmentally unfriendly, it is socially irresponsible and potentially life threatening.

"From our research, the capacity of the treatment facility in Jeddah is not sufficient to cope with the quantity being delivered," the source said. "The Qurma treatment station is now bypassed, and untreated commercial, industrial and domestic waste is being pumped directly into the Red Sea. The huge amount of organic matter, high in nitrates and phosphates, is greatly increasing the nutrients causing algae growth and plankton blooms."

Feces, industrial waste, toxic components and heavy metals that make up the outflow does not go away just by being deep under water and away from public view. Most of it flows southward, dragged by the prevailing current that passes Jeddah and moves along the coast toward Al-Laith and Jizan. Some, through eddying shore currents, flows back toward Al-Hamra Beach. Other local currents precipitate thousands of tons of brown ooze on the coral shore to the immediate south of the King Faisal Naval Base south of Jeddah in an area once renowned for diving.

The immediate effect of the pollution of the Al-Hamra Beach and Corniche is the green weed that grows in profusion at the water's edge. The municipality cleans it away when the tourist season is imminent, only to be thwarted by the return of the weed reproducing and growing on the rich nutrient source it thrives on. Soon the stuff is back, growing rapidly in the clear but heavily polluted water.

Children play in this, families sit beside it and disease breeds in it. And very often, it stinks. Less obvious are the hidden effects of the toxic outpouring.

"We have dived in Jeddah over the last 15 years (and) the recent huge increase in organic pollution has caused the underwater visibility to decrease from an average of 20 meters to six-to-eight meters. The Red Sea up to 150 km away from the shore is turning green. Algae blooms are smothering the coral reefs and suffocating it, and this effect is compounded by the reduced visibility caused by plankton, which is reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the photosynthesizing corals and they are dying off. Corals reefs are the basis of the food chain and we expect to see a dramatic collapse of the Jeddah marine ecosystem in the coming months," said the source.

It is not just the marine environment that is threatened by this pollution. "Heavy metal pollutants are now entering the food chain which we eat when we eat locally caught fish," the source added.

The many and varied species of animals at the lower end of the marine food chain browse on all the other ingredients of the outfall, including whatever heavy metals and other toxic ingredients it contains. Prawns for example.

Ever wondered why wild local prawns have a substantial black and swollen gut and what is in it? You know now. They eat it and we eat them, along with a variety of other locally caught fish. The local fresh fish market of the Corniche is positively awash with people blissfully unaware of what they are buying and consuming.

It seems that three more of such deep-water outfall pipes are planned for a site to the north of the existing pipeline. Their contracts, if not already signed, have been drawn up. There are, sources say, no matching treatment plants planned.

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