Hello my dear friends from Eco-gen,

Hope you are faring well! Recently, I attended a very interesting community lecture by the EEG on the super-duper interesting topic of Waste water-From pollution to solution.

I would like to share the experience and knowledge that I gained through this process. This lecture was ably presented by Mr Rashed Karkain. Mr Rashed Karkain is the head of the Jabel Ali Sewage Treatment Plant Section for the Dubai Municipality, UAE. He is a Chemical Engineer graduated from the University of South Florida and has had 10 years of experience in Environmental studies and planning including but not limited to environmental impact assessments.

The Topic in brief was as follows:

Nature has an amazing ability and capacity to cope with small amounts of waste and pollution in water. But it would be overwhelmed if we wouldn?t treat the billions of gallons of wastewater and sewage produced every day before releasing it back into the environment.

Treatment plants reduce pollutants in wastewater to a level nature can handle. If the wastewater is not treated, then the environment and human health can be negatively impacted. Wastewater includes all sources of discharged household water into sewers industrial effluent and storm water inflows. The wastewater generated in Dubai is not wasted.

This community lecture brought my attention to the measures to treat the wastewater produced in households, industries and public places to make it reusable. The case of Dubai Municipality was presented by Mr Rashed Karkain which covered the technology, treatment and service standards maintained to cater everyone in the city.

Mr Rashed Karkain presented himself as a very alert and attentive lecturer. The veracity of this statement was proven as he opened the lecture by telling us that as he was driving in the rain to reach the venue of the lecture, he saw that the sprinklers in the gardens were switched on even when it was raining. He posed a question to everyone as to why this was so? He left this rhetorical question for us to ponder upon throughout the lecture saying that we may be able to find some hints in the subsequent slides.

Then Mr Rashed went on with his lecture dividing the whole presentation into the four types of waters that the Dubai Municipality treats.

      Industrial Waste water

      Marine environmental water quality

      Ground water

      Sewage

Industrial Waste water

Mr Karkain highlighted that industrial waste water was of two types, hazardous and non-hazardous. Hazardous waste water is the waste water that emits greenhouse gases and in some cases, radioactive energy. Such type of water can be produced in Galvanizing activities.

Non-Hazardous waste water is the waste water that cannot be disposed of on land, in sea and in the air and has to undergo some type of treatment but at the same time, it is safer, cleaner and of course, less hazardous than hazardous waste water.

What does the Dubai Municipality do about it?

Dubai Municipality has several schemes and initiatives that it launched such as:

o   Environment Impact Assessment or the EIA is done before the execution of a project such as a new building. If the standards are within the threshold, the Dubai Municipality passes the project and the construction starts

o   Standards such as quality of the waste water, decomposition facilities, etc. are taken care of by the DM.

o   Disposal Permits are to be issued by the Dubai Municipality before any organisation, hotel or individual can dispose of waste water in the land, sea or air.

o   Inspection Sampling and Enforcement

Solutions

1.     In house treatment

2.     Dubai Municipality Hazardous Waste Treatment Facility

Marine Environmental Water Quality

Solutions

Water Quality Monitoring

Hydrodynamics and ecological modeling

Online monitoring and data collection

Laboratory Operation

Integrated Research Mitigation

Ground Water

Solutions

Identifying and classification

Treatment process through heavy machines 

Restore to land facilities

Sewage

This topic covered the major portion of the presentation as it was the leading environmental concern and the cause for the lecture. The JASTP or the Jabel Ali Sewage Treatment Plant is one of the two active wastewater treatment plants in the UAE.

Did you know that 149,000,000 cubic metres of Treated Sewage Effluent (TSE) was used for irrigation purposes in 2011 in the UAE? That is an alarming number! You can surely imagine the amount of waste water produced by the people in 2011 if the amount of it used for irrigation was as much

During the presentation, I was inquisitive as to how much was the length of the irrigation facility to which knowledgeable MR Karkain immediately replied, 1,100 km. I was happy to know that the network of the wastewater treatment system in the UAE was this long and this point was ably explained by Mr Karkain through many other maps and highlighted graphics.

List of tasks

The list of tasks that the Dubai Municipality has to undergo in order to treat Sewage water are as follows:

Mr Rashed then ended the lecture by asking for answer to his previous question:

Why is the irrigation system still on even though when it is raining?

I thought for a while and then answered: "It is because the wastewater that is to be reused as irrigation water cannot be stored for a long time and therefore has to come out whether the circumstances are favourable or not." I received a huge round of applause by the audience for this answer of mine and was appreciated a lot. Mr Rashed Karkain added by saying that there is a flow of the cycle of the waste water process. As it is supplied to the treatment plant, it is treated continually nonstop and has to reach the specified destination and come out at the other end. Just like we cannot stop a flowing river, we cannot stop this process.

All in all the lecture was very informative and in a nutshell, I learned a lot from the evening.

My school DPS Sharjah was a water treatment plant behind the school that treats the water from the washrooms and uses it for irrigation of the organic farms. Like this if we all can make a few changes by saving water, we can all save the energy cost and time consumed in treating the unnecessary extra water that we water due to sheer carelessness.

Best Regards,

Rohan Kapur