The country's once-pristine coast, which is dotted with six star hotels and exclusive resorts, has been transformed into a foul-smelling health hazard in recent weeks.The state of the beaches have become so bad that a stretch of the exclusive Jumeirah Beach - a magnet for Western tourists and home to a string of expensive hotels - has been closed.

“It’s a cesspool. Our tests show too many E. coli to count. It’s like swimming in a toilet,” Keith Mutch, the manager of the Offshore Sailing Club, told the Times.His club has posted warnings about the danger of entering the polluted water and has been forced to cancel regattas.

The state of the beaches is a blow to Dubai’s reputation as an international holiday destination offering almost guaranteed sunshine and sparkling seas.But it is not clear who is to blame for their deterioration. Local authorities have been criticised for failing to stop lorry drivers dumping human and industrial waste into the ocean, but the rapid development of the coast in recent years, in an attempt to capitalise on the tourist market, has also contributed to the mess.

Mr Mutch first detected the sewage during a walk on the beach last summer. “The stench was unbearable and the water was a muddy brown. There was toilet paper in the sand,” he told the paper. He traced the sludge to a storm drain that was spewing effluent into the sea. He followed the drain several kilometres inland to the Al Quoz industrial area, which houses the factories that have helped to fuel the city’s rapid growth.

There he discovered that dozens of sewage lorries carrying human waste from Dubai’s 1.3 million inhabitants emptied their tanks into storm drains such as the one leading to the sailing club.City authorities have since promised to build another sewage pit as a “medium-term solution”, while insisting that the latest test results show water samples to be within safe standards.