Thursday, Aug 14, 2008

Dubai: Treated sewage water has many uses from watering garden landscapes and golf courses, farming and irrigation and soon - running your air conditioning, said a municipality official.

In the next five years, treated effluent water from the soon to open Jabal Ali Sewage Treatment plant could be used in district cooling plants in Jabal Ali.

Another sewage plant using membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology with a lower ecological footprint will be opening for the Jumeirah Golf Estates by Nakheel. It will be the largest plant in the world.

Mohammad Abdul Aziz Al Awadi, director of Al Aweer sewage treatment plant from Dubai Municipality said MBR technology costs roughly 30 per cent more in initial and running costs of traditional sewage treatment methods, but has a lower footprint and gives better quality treated water.

Sewage is a major problem in Dubai with the only sewage treatment plant in Al Aweer running 100 per cent over capacity, said Al Awadi. The sooner the Jabal Ali sewage plant opens next year the better.

It will have a capacity of 300,000 cubic metres a day and will be serving the waste from Dubai. The Al Aweer plant will not be closing, but receiving waste from Deira.

Overflow

In the past three years, the rate of increase for sewage received at Al Aweer has been between 15 and 17 per cent. Before this, it had lingered at the five to seven per cent mark said Al Awadi.

Currently trucks bringing sewage to the plant are constantly forced to wait in lines that last dozens of hours before reaching the pumping bays to empty their tanks.

In the future, any overflow trucks will be directed to the new site in Jabal Ali reducing the waiting time of close to 18 hours a day for some sewage truck drivers. "There are 40 bays and we have added 20 extra bays. Ten are open now and the rest will open soon," said Al Awadi. The plant was built to cope with 260,000 cubic metres of sewage a day but in reality this amount is 520,000 cubic metres daily.

The Jabal Ali plant will be 50 per cent online by the middle of next year and ready to accommodate sewage tankers. Sewage intake into the plant will generally be through pipelines however, said Al Awadi.

Currently, Al Aweer treated effluent is used for irrigation. Thirty per cent is pumped back into the creek but a campaign is trying to reduce this to nil by injecting water back into the ground through 'surface flooding' said Al Awadi. Thirty thousand cubic metres of treated waste water is dumped in an area in Al Khawaneej daily.

Another 5,000 cubic metres of treated water from the plant is sold into the agricultural sector for farming.

By Emmanuelle Landais

Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.