SR2.2bn reservoir to solve Jeddah's water woes

The National Water Company announced on Sunday that it was building a strategic water reservoir in Jeddah at a cost of SR2.2 billion with a capacity of 6 million cubic meters to meet requirements of the city’s growing population.
The water storage facility is being built in Briman. The project’s first phase, which is designed to supply 1.5 million cubic meters, will be ready by the second quarter of next year.
“Once the remaining three phases are completed, it will have a total capacity of six million cubic meters,” the NWC said.
“This strategic project will not only meet the water requirements of Jeddah, which has a population of nearly four million including expats, but also the seasonal needs, especially during Haj and Umrah,” said Badr Almotawa, a Saudi journalist and expert on water projects.
Almotawa said Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer of desalinated water and possesses advanced desalination technology. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology focuses on desalination technology as well as agriculture in desert land, he said. The Kingdom’s total desalinated water output has crossed five million cubic meters.
The NWC said it supplied 1.1 million cubic meters of water daily to Jeddah during Ramadan. “As a result of an advanced planning, we supplied water to Jeddah districts throughout Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr holidays without any disruption,” it added.
The company’s toll-free No. 8004411110 has been receiving 10,644 calls on average daily for water trucks and to inform about water leaks and lack of supply. The Jeddah supply center deals with more than 2,000 water trucks daily, it pointed out.
The NWC has saved 314 million cubic meters of precious water valued at SR1.8 billion by preventing leakages in Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah and Taif since 2009.
In Riyadh alone, the company saved 210 million cubic meters of water while in Jeddah and Makkah it reached 46 million and 50 million respectively. The company has repaired more than 256,000 pipeline leakage cases in the four cities since 2009, including 167,000 in Riyadh, 64,000 in Jeddah and 20,000 in Makkah.