Jeddah flood projects to be completed by Nov 27

All emergency flood projects underway in Jeddah will be completed before the November 27 deadline, a senior official has pledged. Prince Mansour bin Miteb, Municipal and Rural Affairs Minister, said all work was progressing as planned as he visited a number of the work sites, Saudi daily Arab News reported on Friday. Fourteen contracts were awarded in August to carry out emergency projects as part of a plan to prevent flooding in Jeddah. A major ministerial meeting on tackling flooding in the city reviewed short and long-term projects planned to confront flashfloods that have destroyed the city in the past. In November 2009, floods resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people and rendered about 10,000 people homeless while thousands of homes, buildings and vehicles were also destroyed. “Work on all short-term emergency projects are progressing as planned. The ministry gets weekly reports on the progress of the projects,” Prince Mansour said while touring the sites of flood protection projects in Quwaisah, Umm Al-Khayr and other locations. The prince added that the ministry wanted not only the completion of the projects on time but also insisted on the quality of the work, the paper said, citing a report in the Al-Madinah Arabic daily. The projects visited by the minister included Qaus Check Dam 2, which has a capacity to hold 1.16m cubic meters of floodwater, and an underground pipe canal in the Mathoub valley. In April, US-based Aecom Technology Corporation won a $171m order to work on a new long-term flood control system in Jeddah. Aecom said it will provide project management services including a consultancy, engineering, and construction services contract for a citywide storm water, flood-control, and wastewater infrastructure improvement programme. Under the contract, Aecom will supervise emergency and long-term solutions against natural disasters, especially flooding.