The Jeddah Mayoralty has sought the help of a Dutch team to look into the safety of the dam at the sewage lake in Jeddah's northeast. The team from Holland, here to conduct a two-week survey of the earthen dam, arrived on Sunday and will report to the mayoralty with proposals to ensure the safety of the structure. There is a proposal to construct a new dam three kilometers behind the current one, towards the west at a narrow point in the valley. This is to prevent pressure from building up and causing underground water seepage from the current concrete dam. Ibrahim Katabkhanah, Jeddah Deputy Mayor for Construction and Projects, chaired on Monday two meetings to discuss sewage projects in the region. In the first meeting, attended by Muhammad Bin Ahmad Al-Bogdadi, the director of the Makkah Province Water Board, and Muhammad Shaheen, project manager at the National Water Company (NWC), Katabkhanah noted that new regulations had led to a fall in the lake's water level by nearly a meter in the last two months. Al-Bogdadi said all of the board's Jeddah projects had been passed on to the NWC, signifying a transfer of 3,000 employees. The NWC has also signed a contract with a French company, one of the largest in the world in the field, to monitor, operate and maintain all water projects in Jeddah. The French company started working last September. The second meeting dealt with the issue of hundreds of street potholes left by work on the sewage infrastructure. Katabkhanah told contractors that some 700 complaints had been received concerning holes in streets left by contractors' excavations, and that it was their responsibility to make sure that they were repaired. A full report is expected to be presented at a meeting scheduled for next week. – Okaz __
