A Worrying Turd of Events

Say Dubai, and what do you think of?
Glorious sunshine? Yes.
Amazing hotels and restaurants? Hmm hmm.
White sandy beaches and crystal blue sea? Well, no actually, quite the opposite.

Dubai has been having a small crisis recently, in the shape of raw sewage being dumped straight into the sea. Why? Well Dubai has no sewage system (no, really) instead sewage is collected by large tankers and taken to a sewage plant on the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately Dubai has grown at such a pace that this plant is well over capacity, and tankers can queue for up to 12 hours to discharge their waste. And tanker drivers are paid according to how many loads they take. Or dump down drains, as the case would seem.

This has led to sewage making its way onto the beaches, and the situation is very serious. Raw sewage, as you can imagine, carries all sorts of nasty bacteria and creatures, which at best might give you a bit of a dodgy tummy, at worse could leave you with full-blown e-coli or even make you go blind. Nice!

It’s meant that we haven’t been to the beach in a few weeks (they actually closed one of them last week), but this isn’t supposed to be a moan about how this infringes on my bikini time, more a concern that this can happen. I’m truly amazed that the international press hasn't got a whiff of the story. (Couldn't resist that pun, sorry.)