WADI AL ASLA
lake might burst its banks and that water might flow into the city. “During the floods of Nov 2009, the amount of rainfall we had, completely
filled up all available space within the sewage lake and completely filled the reservoir space behind the emergency lake aswell. It just got to the point of over topping, if those two lakes had not been in place, the floods would have been many times worse. “It enabled us to test our concept master plan design, we were able to check and amend our storm water drainage in the plan and cater for an extreme event like we saw in November 2009.” Travers says that storm water management is a key component along with the infrastructure for sewage drainage, which ‘has been seriously lacking over the years.’ He adds that there is a directive that sewage effluent should not be discharged into the red sea. “Tat’s a fine aspiration for protecting the environment and is absolutely laudable. Te difficulty arises, when you’ve got millions of people there consuming water, and even if it’s treated to high standard the city will end up with 1-1.5 million cubic metres of sewage effluent by 2015, where does that go?” Travers says, through Buro Happold’s work, the municipality, and relationship with JDRUC, the idea arose that they could capture sewage
effluent, bring it back to the wadi and use it to drive the quality of public areas. Tey could create gardens, a better environment via water based landscape and create quality space for development. Te project was very similar to work carried out in Riyadh on Wadi Hanifah. “Although we weren’t dealing with a huge sewage lake in Riyadh, we were still dealing with very poor water quality being pumped out of the city into the Wadi Hanifah. It was poorly treated waste water, the challenge was to improve water quality into city drainage so it became safe and healthy for the people of Riyadh. Te way people are now using that space is phenomenal.” Summarising the success of the project due to the company’s unique and cutting-edge approach, Travers concludes: “Te key challenge for Buro Happold was to take an undesirable place, and change people’s perspective of the area from very negative to overwhelmingly positive.” Travers says his company’s approach could be replicated throughout the world, especially in the arid zones and countries where there are waste water issues. “Instead of seeing it as a problem, people have got to change their mindset and see it as we have. We approached it as an opportunity ”l
24 I CITYSCAPE I JUNE 2011
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