Safaga's New Desalination Plant Will Make Four Times as Much Water as the One It Has

Safaga's new seawater desalination plant is being built to produce 30,000 cubic metres of drinking water a day — more than four times the 7,000 cubic metres the town's existing plant makes — according to Youm7 and Al-Masry Al-Youm, which reported a field tour of the coast's water and sewage works by Ahmed Omran, deputy housing minister for utilities.

Omran inspected the new plant's site and its sea intake, where preparatory works are under way. The reports place it within the state's plan to expand seawater desalination in coastal governorates, and Omran pressed for the executive steps to be completed on schedule, for energy use to be kept down from the design stage onwards, and for the land allocated to the new plants to be planned so it can absorb later expansions.

The tour, ordered by Housing Minister Randa El-Menshawy, took in:

• Safaga's existing desalination plant, 7,000 cubic metres a day
• the site of the new Safaga plant, 30,000 cubic metres a day, with its sea intake
• Hurghada's tertiary treatment plant, 90,000 cubic metres a day, whose treated water irrigates forestry plantations
• the new Dahar water pumping station, with two 10,000-cubic-metre storage tanks and a SCADA control room
• the El Yosr desalination plant, 80,000 cubic metres a day
• sewage plant "H", 117,000 cubic metres a day, serving southern Hurghada and the tourist promenade

The Dahar station is fed from two sources — the Kreimat pipeline and a line from the El Yosr desalination plant — and the areas it serves account for more than 25 per cent of Hurghada's daily water needs, the reports say.

Mostafa El-Shimy, chairman of the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater, said the point of inspecting on the ground is to establish how efficiently the plants and networks are actually running, and stressed preventive maintenance, given what he called the particular nature of the Red Sea Governorate and the careful management of water resources it requires. Omran ended the visit at the company's customer service centre, where he ordered procedures simplified, the service cycle shortened, digital services expanded and complaints answered faster.

The reports give no cost for the new Safaga plant, no contractor and no completion date.

Water supply is the coast's live grievance: this site reported the governorate putting drinking water top of its list with six plants planned, and El Quseir residents saying their supply now arrives every eight to ten days. Capacity on a site plan is not the same as water in the tap, but on the figures given the new plant would more than quadruple Safaga's own desalination capacity.