Capacity of recently-commissioned wastewater treatment plant in Al Saja'a set to double
A new joint venture company between Belgium-headquartered construction company Besix and Sharjah's Investment and Developer Authority, Shurooq, will take wastewater from homes in Sharjah, treat it, and then sell it on to customers in the emirate's industrial areas.
The joint venture, Qatra, was announced last Monday. It will take charge of the Al Saja’a wastewater treatment plant built by Besix for the Sharjah government and commissioned last year, double its capacity, add a polishing plant and then commercialise the sale of treated water through a network that it will develop in the industrial areas close to the plant.
Besix Middle East's executive vice-president Olivier Crasson told Zawya in a telephone interview last Tuesday that the plant, which can currently treat up to 30 million litres of wastewater per day, was commissioned because not all of the houses or buildings in the emirate are connected to the sewer network, and prior to its opening the contents of septic tanks had to be taken via tankers to a location close to the city centre.
“The number of tankers is significant. We're talking a few thousand tankers per day who have to empty septic tanks,” Crasson said.
He said that once the new plant at Al Saja’a, which is close to Sharjah Cement Factory, became operational, “we realised that there is a significant quantity of water that is going to be spoiled if we don't do anything”.
“It's just going to be discharged into a lake, which is not good for the environment, especially in the desert,” Crasson said.
Crasson said that a proposal to reuse the water was put to Shurooq, whose “chairman was very enthusiastic”. This led to Qatra being formed as a public-private partnership, with each partner providing equity for the venture. Crasson said that debt would also need to be raised to fund the forthcoming expansion, which will see the plant’s capacity doubled to handle 60 million litres per day, and a polishing plant added.
Part of the additional treated water will be diverted via a pipeline to a “strategic project with His Highness the Ruler” in another part of Sharjah, Crasson said, but declined to give further details.
The rest will be distributed to customers in nearby industrial areas, while treated sludge will also be used for fuel.
Crasson said that the commercialisation plan for distributing water to the surrounding areas was still being finalised, with the cost of pipelines and transmission networks being assessed, however, he added that he had “no doubt that this will materialise”.
“We are going to offer water at a very competitive price. It's much cheaper to use treated water than to use desalinated water.”
Besix is a Belgian-headquartered contractor which is 50 percent owned by Orascom Construction - the Egyptian contractor whose shares are listed both on the Egyptian Exchange and Nasdaq Dubai.
Besix has prior experience of wastewater PPP projects in the UAE, having been part of a consortium that has a 25-year concession to run a sewage treatment network in neighbouring Ajman, which it built alongside partners Veolia and Black & Veatch in 2009.
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