The water crisis here has reached alarming proportions. The taps run dry for days on end and residents have either resorted to buying this essential commodity from tankers at exorbitant prices or using costly bottled water even for daily use. Several residents here said it was bewildering that the city is experiencing an acute water shortage while desalination plants here are providing water to other cities. “The situation has been the same for years now,” said Mohammad Al-Khaldi, a resident. He said residents sometimes do not get water for days making life miserable. Khaled Al-Mihanna, another resident, said people have started depending on water tankers and storing water in containers inside their houses for emergency situations. “It is a difficult situation when one wakes up in the morning and cannot find a drop of water. We have to use bottled water even in toilets. And a tanker is hard to find and is also very costly,” he said. Khalaf Abu Al-Enain believes the crisis is due to a lack of organization, the absence of transparency and bad distribution. “Officials at first said the crisis was due to a broken pipe, but the continuation of the crisis made it clear that the province's allocation of desalinated water is not enough,” he said. Ahmad Abdulrahman Al-Bassam, Director of Water Supplies in the Eastern Province, attributed the crisis to the province's insufficient allocations of desalinated water. The insufficiency, he said, is due to the increasing population and urban expansion. He said well water is being used currently until the water desalination project of Marafiq is operational in Jubail this year. The project is expected to cover the Eastern Province's needs of potable water by providing 500,000 cubic meters per day. Thamer Al-Sharhan, Chairman of Marafiq Company, said construction work is underway to build the largest electricity and water station in the world at a cost of SR12.6 billion. The station will produce 2,743 megawatts and 800,000 cubic meters of desalinated water – of which 300,000 will be allocated for Jubail Industrial City and 500,000 for the rest of the Eastern Province including Jubail. The distribution for cities other than Industrial Jubail, he said, will be through the Saline Water Conversion Corporation, adding that the problem will end with the completion of the project.
