By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated on Monday the world’s largest water treatment plant of Bahr al-Baqar in the northern province of Port Said.
It has recently been awarded by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest plant of its kind as working on treating the sludge of the agricultural sewage and prevents mixing the sea and the underground water.
“The plant costs 20 billion Egyptian pounds (1.27 billion U.S. dollars) with a production capacity of 5.6 million cubic meters per day,” said Bassam Rady, spokesperson of the presidency.
The triple-treated water will be transferred to the lands of North and Central Sinai, northeast of the capital Cairo, to contribute to the reclamation and planation of nearly 500,000 feddans (about 2.1 billion square meters), according to Rady.
Established on 155 feddans (about 646,000 square meters), 10 km southern Port Said tunnels in Sinai, the plant will treat Bahr al-Baqar sewage along 217 km passing through six provinces: Port Said, Ismailia, Damietta, Daqahilya, Sharqiya, and Qaloubiya.
“The plant is one of a series of national projects to develop Sinai and enhance the optimum use of water resources in the country,” Rady added as quoted by Bignews Network.