Egypt Inaugurates the World’s Largest Wastewater Plant

The Bahr El-Baqar wastewater treatment plant, located in the northern governorate of Port Said, was inaugurated by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on 27 September 2021.

This project, the largest of its kind in the world, is a joint venture between the Arab Contractors Company and Orascom Construction.

With a treatment capacity of five million cubic metres per day, the wastewater treatment plant comes at a cost of EGP 20 billion, Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady said. It consists of four water treatment lines with a daily processing capacity of 1,250,000 cubic metres each.

Equipped with advanced operating systems for pumping raw water, coagulation, flocculation, decantation, filtration and disinfection, the plant will recover the wastewater that flows along the Bahr Al-Baqar drain. According to the Arab Contractors Company, it will triple-treat and optimise water quality for irrigating local crops, to reclaim and cultivate approximately 400,000 feddans of farmland east of the Suez Canal.

This project is part of the Sinai Peninsula Development Program, an initiative that invests in sustainable infrastructure and seeks to improve services provided to citizens.

The plant holds three Guinness World Records: it is the largest structure of its kind as well as the world’s biggest solar-powered sludge drying system comprising 250,000 square metres.

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