TURING WASTEWATER INTO WEALTH

SALALAH, SEPT 7
About half of the treated wastewater produced across Oman is not currently being put to productive use, a Nama Water Services policy expert said in an exclusive interview in Salalah.
Sultan bin Saif al Salami, Policy and Planning Expert at Nama Water Services, was speaking on the sidelines of the Water Resources Sustainability: Water and Climate Change symposium. He said treated wastewater should increasingly be viewed as an economic input rather than simply the final output of a sanitation system.
Al Salami estimated that around 108 million cubic metres of treated wastewater is produced annually across Oman, with roughly half currently utilised.
“We pay to treat wastewater and then we pay to deal with the treated water”, he said. “The treated water has economic and environmental value”.
The scale of the unused resource matters in a country where desalination remains central to potable water supply while agriculture, urban expansion and climate pressures compete for limited water resources.
Al Amerat could test a wider investment model
One of the most significant proposals discussed by Al Salami is a concept in Al Amerat that would use surplus treated water as the basis for a wider development spanning approximately 5.6 million square metres.
Nama Water Services has been pursuing the concept with stakeholders including Muscat Municipality and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning. The initial idea is to demonstrate how treated-water supplies and suitable land could be brought together to support greener neighbourhoods and productive economic activity.
The proposed site has varied terrain that could support a mix of agricultural, tourism, recreational and commercial activities, Al Salami said. Biofuel-related production is among the possibilities being considered, although the eventual investment mix would depend on the master plan and subsequent land allocations.
Al Salami estimated that the broader concept could ultimately support between 1,000 and 1,500 direct and indirect jobs.
That figure is preliminary. No final investment mix has been approved and the employment outcome will depend on what is ultimately developed on the site.
“The master plan will determine the investment components on the land”, Al Salami said. Once the uses are clearer and the relevant authorities determine how individual areas could be offered for agricultural, tourism or other investment, Nama would be in a stronger position to determine the infrastructure required to supply the development, he added.

Nama’s 2025 indicators add context
Nama Water Services’ published 2025 indicators point to the scale of the reuse challenge within its operating territory.
The company reported a treated-water utilisation rate of 53 per cent and recorded 37.05 million cubic metres of treated-water overflow during the year.
Nama’s operating territory excludes Dhofar, meaning the published operating figures and Al Salami’s broader national estimate of around 108 million cubic metres do not cover precisely the same geographical base.
Both nevertheless point to substantial volumes of treated water that could potentially be put to greater productive use.
Theoretical value, not lost revenue
Putting a monetary value on that opportunity requires caution.
Nama’s application platform for agricultural customers uses 220 baisa per cubic metre as a reference treated-water tariff. Applied to the 37.05 million cubic metres recorded as overflow in 2025, that produces a theoretical gross-volume value of about RO 8.15 million.
That is not RO 8.15 million in lost revenue.
Turning overflow into sales requires transmission pipelines, distribution networks, viable customers, land allocations and investment capable of consuming the water consistently. The economics will differ from project to project.
The calculation is useful for one reason: it illustrates that treated wastewater has potential economic value once the infrastructure and demand exist to use it.
Agriculture is an obvious market. Landscaping, urban greening, tourism developments and some industrial and commercial activities can also use appropriately treated recycled water where potable-quality supplies are unnecessary.
Greater reuse can therefore support economic activity while preserving higher-quality water for uses that genuinely require it.
Infrastructure is becoming the missing link
There is already evidence that Oman’s treated-water market is expanding.
Nama said the number of beneficiaries of its treated-water service increased by more than 36 per cent in 2025, from 228 to 311. The company has increasingly positioned treated water under its Manhal Nama initiative as a resource for economic and environmental use rather than simply an output of wastewater treatment.
In Barka, Nama awarded a RO 2.3 million project to supply treated water to farms in the Al Shakhakhit area. The scheme includes more than 40 kilometres of pipelines, initially designed to connect 60 farms, with longer-term plans to extend the network to more than 200 farms.
The infrastructure push is continuing. On August 19, Nama floated a tender for construction of a treated-effluent transmission pipeline from Al Seeb to Barka.
Those projects underline the geographical nature of the challenge. A treatment plant may produce water in one location while the farms, tourism projects or industrial users capable of consuming it are kilometres away. Without transmission infrastructure, an apparent water surplus cannot automatically become a marketable resource.
From treatment targets to utilisation targets
Al Salami also sees greater reuse as a way to reduce unnecessary reliance on desalinated water for applications that do not require potable-quality supplies.
The comparison, however, should not be reduced to a simple tariff calculation. Oman’s official bulk tariff for desalinated water contains fixed capacity charges as well as variable charges that change according to month and time of day, so it cannot be compared directly with the 220-baisa reference tariff for treated water.
The wider question raised by the Salalah interview is how Oman measures water efficiency in the next phase of sector development.
Building wastewater-treatment capacity remains essential, but treatment alone is no longer the end point. Increasingly, success will also depend on how much of the resulting water is productively reused.
That requires something closer to a market-development model: identifying major users, reserving suitable land, building transmission infrastructure and structuring projects around dependable supplies of recycled water.
Al Amerat could become one test of that model. Its significance is not simply the prospect of greener neighbourhoods, tourism activity or up to 1,500 jobs. It is whether multiple government agencies, infrastructure providers and investors can convert a resource that already exists into productive economic activity.
For Oman’s water economy, the next efficiency gain may therefore come not from producing more water, but from extracting more value from the water it already produces.