Al Fanateer Corniche

A 400 m² turf plot irrigated with treated sewage effluent at Al Fanateer Corniche, Jubail Industrial City. It was installed in December 2011 as a pilot for the Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu and monitored by the Commission's contractor SATCO together with EPIC staff on site.

In October 2011 Sheikh Faisal Al Rasheed, the Commission's Director of Planning, invited EPIC to run the pilot, with a target of a 50% water saving against existing systems. The site was against it from the start. The sand was very salty and unwashed, the turf supplied was of poor quality, and planting fell in the grass hibernating season. A high water table near the sea also pushes seawater into conventionally landscaped ground, but it cannot enter an EPIC profile.

On 28 December, eleven days after turfing, soil salinity read 0.91 at about 25 cm deep, against the 0.1 to 0.4 recommended for turf. The cause was unwashed sand and too much fertiliser. The system flushed itself: the water level was raised until fresh water flooded most of the profile, then drained, taking the salt with it, with no modification or special equipment. Flushing ran on 29 and 31 December and 3 January, and on 4 January 2012 salinity read below 0.4.

The client's daily meter log shows 102 m³ added over 105 days on the 400 m² plot. Take out the 16 m³ removed for flushing and use comes to 2.05 L/m²/day. Also take out the 38 m³ used to charge the profile and it comes to 1.14 L/m²/day. The existing pop-up sprinklers at Al Fanateer use 20 L/m²/day, and the report states a saving of more than 80%. By 21 February 2012, roots had reached at least 20 cm.