‘Misk Lake,’ the 2+ square kilometer sewage retention pond outside of Jeddah is high on the list of worries for Jeddawis. Millions of cubic meters of raw sewage pouring down the streets of Jeddah is not an attractive proposition. Those immediately downhill from the Lake are in greater danger. Saudi Gazette/Okaz report on the issue:

Misk Lake is a ‘time-bomb’, says Municipal official
Ibrahim Alawi

JEDDAH – A leading member of the city’s municipality has warned that Misk Lake is a “time-bomb” that could drown the city in raw sewage in two hours if its banks are breached.

Bassam Akhdr, a member of the Jeddah Municipal Council and the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has emphasized that projects completed in the past have not helped to resolve the problem.

He described the lake as a “time-bomb” threatening three million people living in Jeddah. He said the lake could kill millions if its reserve bank collapses.

“The entire city will drown in less than two hours, Allah forbid.”
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The Lake is a danger to the city, one engineer responds, but let’s not get carried away. Safety can be assured, he says, by lowering the level of watery wastes. This, he claims, will not require the billions of Riyals that city officials are requesting, just some simple engineering solutions… which he doesn’t spell out.

Misk Lake remains a threat to city, warns expert
Muhammad Al-Ajlan

JEDDAH – A local environment expert has warned that Misk Lake poses a continual threat to residents and called on the Mayoralty to take urgent action.

Dr. Ali Bin Adnan Ishqi, Professor of Environmental Studies at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, said the sewage lake will continue to be a danger, especially when it rains and the water level rises.

Ishqi called on officials to take action before a tragedy occurs.

If there is rainfall with the same intensity and quantity as that of last Wednesday, the water level in the lake will definitely rise, he said.

To overcome the danger posed by the lake, Ishqi said the mayoralty must reduce the water level in the dam urgently.

Ishqi expressed astonishment at Jeddah Mayoralty officials asking for billions of riyals to solve the lake problem.
…

‘Misk Lake’ has every appearance of being a ‘temporary’ solution to the sewage problems that confront Jeddah, but one that was allowed to become more or less permanent. It’s a blend of modern technology—particularly in monitoring—with archaic behavior—out of sight, out of mind. As both the city of Jeddah and the retention pond grew, however, the ‘out of sight’ part (as well as the ‘out of olfactory range’ factor) changed. The lake now represents a major hazard for the entire city.

Jeddah, it seems, needs a major, expensive, tedious, and disruptive retrofit of a modern sewage and drainage system. The corners cut when the Saudi economy was bad, the ‘commissions’ skimmed off of budgets, the looking the other way when it came to friends’ behavior are all now showing their weaknesses.