Outdated Info: Dubai Poop Trucks

A popular video claims that Dubai lacks a sewer system for the areas including its massive skyscrapers, requiring sewage to be trucked out. Is this real or fake?

The video is real, but the problem has since been corrected.

Let’s take a look at an email which circulated heavily in 2013 and included a link to the YouTube video:

Dubai, they overlooked one detail…!!!

The modern Arab world!! You have seen those architectural wonders of Dubai.

However, none are hooked up to a sewer system!

The two minute video below passes a line of poop trucks and never gets to the end of the line. What were these people thinking?

An unbelievable amount of sewage is generated by the new high-rises and there is no place to dispose of it. Camel sense seems about right!

Dubai doesn’t have a sewage system for all those big new buildings so they haul it all away in tank trucks.
Look at the number of tank trucks that are waiting to dump their load.

This is amazing. They wait for days to dump their load.

You would have thought that by building all those huge skyscrapers they would have enough sense to put in a sufficient sewage system to haul away all that crap.

You would imagine that those building that look amazingly beautiful were built on a well-planned system of utilities. But, that’s NOT TRUE!!

Dubai Sewage System

While it is true that there was a time when all of Dubai did not connect to a sewage system, by late 2010 it was reported that “all areas” had been connected to the city’s sewage network. Thus, the video is no longer an accurate description of the sewage system in Dubai, although a small percentage of sewage is still trucked to the Jebel Ali plant.

2009 Controversy

Around the time this video was shot, a controversy was brewing in Dubai related to these sewage trucks. Some impatient truck drivers resorted to illegal dumping of sewage, which found its way to swimming areas via storm drains. As more of the city connected to the sewage system, these lines disappeared and illegal dumping was no longer a problem.

Video

Below you can see the video entitled “The Poop Snake” which as of late 2015 has over two million views on YouTube since it was posted in 2009. While it does portray the state of the sewage system in Dubai at the time, the issues presented have since been addressed.

Bottom Line

The video regarding “Dubai poop trucks” and the accompanying text were accurate until about 2009, but this is information is now outdated. As of 2013, only a small percentage of sewage is transported via trucks, and these were not reported to be from skyscrapers or any specific area as suggested in video above.

Additional Sources:

• Sanitation in Dubai (Wikipedia)
• No more queues at sewage terminal (The National)
• Filthy Rich: Dubai Choking on Sewage (ABC News, 2009)

Updated November 21, 2015
Originally published May 2013