Planning? What planning?

It's just another example of my main complaint, which I post about endlessly.

About six years ago Sheikh Mohammed announced the freehold law. The overall strategic plan has been well publicised, the growth in population, the developments, the target for tourist numbers.

I would have thought the need for infrastructure - more power, water, sewage treatment, roads, public transport - was obvious and easy to predict.

So it was all planned at the same time as the massive new developments, right?

Wrong.

Today there's a report in EmBiz247 from the ME Waste & Water Congress being held in Dubai.

In Dubai we're facing a challenge to deal with sewage... We are currently working at 60 per cent above capacity in the existing treatment plants. We are under pressure but we're still surviving. The 60 per cent will not reduce in the coming years.

A new sewage treatment plant at Jebel Ali is being built. It'll help, but it's going to be running at full capacity, or more, from day one if the figures are correct.

The designed capacity of the existing plants in the emirate stands at 260,000 cubic metres per day, whereas the actual operating capacity is more than 480,000 cubic metres a day.

So that's 220,000 cmd excess to cope with, at present rates.

The Jebel Ali treatment plant, currently under construction at a cost of Dh1.4 billion, is expected to boost Dubai's capacity by 300,000 cubic metres per day.

So by today's volumes the new plant will have spare capacity of just 80,000 cmd.

By the time the new plant opens in 2010 - yes, the sceduled opening is that far away - the volumes to be treated will be way more than that.

Even with the new plant up and running, all of them will be working at their design capacity or more.

So with foresight, with the much-claimed vision, with the examples all around us of what chaos a lack of planning produces, another one is under way already is it?




Here's the report.