Large amounts of illegal sewage are being discharged into the Red Sea from the city leading to the rapid growth of algae and the spread of pollution reaching Salman beach in the north, said Mohammad Abdusalam, the General Supervisor of Makkah Urban Observatory. Speaking at a forum held by Jeddah Mayoralty in conjunction with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) at the Jeddah Hilton on Saturday to discuss the master plan for the environmental protection of the city, Abdulsalam said, “There are around 600 pipes discharging sewage and rain water into the sea and it turns out that 250 of these pipes are illegal meaning that huge amounts of sewage go into the sea without going through a refinery system.” Prince Dr. Mansour Bin Mit'eb, Deputy Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, speaking after the forum, said Jeddah's environmental problems have accumulated for years and to solve them cooperation of all concerned parties is required. The Prince said that a team consisting of experts from the Ministry and the Municipal Council of Jeddah has conducted several studies and has determined that the municipality's responsibility regarding the city's environmental issues is limited. “The mayoralty is now working on two phases: Quick means of solving issues that can be dealt with right away while the other phase will begin after the master plan is completed,” said Prince Mansour. Jeddah, with a population of three million, is not yet a very large city; yet it has a large number of environmental problems, Tarek Fadaaq, head of Jeddah Municipal Council said, adding that serious environmental problems usually occur in large megacities. Mayor Adel Faqih explained that the municipality will consider in its master plan applying what has been learned from local and the international experience in protecting the environment. “Riyadh Province has established an executive plan to protect the environment in conjunction with 21 government sectors and we will benefit from this local experience as well as from China's and Japan's long experience in this field,” said Faqih. Maysam Tameem, the UNDP representative in Saudi Arabia, said that the UNDP will be a main partner in creating a master plan and the municipality will be responsible for executing the plan.
