Almost one year after completion, in the middle of a severe drought a $25 million Water Treatment Plant installed at Cumuto remains empty.
The two massive tanks were installed to treat and distribute four million gallons of water per day—to users in Cumuto and environs—with supplies from wells. However, a Sunday Guardian investigation reveals that to date, sinking of the wells, which was supposed to supply the tanks with water, has come to a halt. The project, which began in June of 2006 and was expected to take 15 months to be done, is yet to be completed. The treatment plant was built by Uem Gem Ltd, while another company was responsible for sinking the wells.
Asked if the plant was operative, one worker who requested anonymity replied: “There is no water so obviously the plant cannot operate. If there is no water the plant cannot work.” The handful of residents in the community believe their complaints for water have fallen on deaf ears.
Source: The Guardian, Trinidad & Tobago, 12 July 2010
Guatemala’s President Álvaro Colom has called for the population to cooperate with the country’s national water chlorination campaign, implemented by the national government on 12 March 2010. The health ministry spends over 90mn quetzales (US$11.2mn) per year on treat water-related illnesses.
Read full article on: BNamericas.com [subscription site], 19 Mar 2010
In January 2010, the president of Sedapal, the state water utility agency, Guillermo León, was accused of too easily awarding a 13.6 million soles ( US$ 4.75 million) contract to TFKC Reprex in December 2008, a company formed just one month prior to the controversial contract selection as a representative of Brazilian Puritech. The contract was awarded for the construction of two waste water treatment plants in San Bartolo, southern Lima.
Following the controversy, Guillermo León resigned from his post as the president of Sedapal.
The scandal has led to suspicions of corruption in other tenders worth some 700 million soles (US$ 245 million).
Sedapal workers’ union head Henry Viera highlighted the need for an independent third party to oversee tender processes.
The new Central American and Caribbean water resource centre Hidrocec (Centro de Recursos Hídricos para Centroamérica y el Caribe) will open in Costa Rica in March 2010. The centre, which will operate under the state-owned college Universidad Nacional (UNA), will provide technical assistance to help countries in the region preserve their water resources. IDB provided US$ 500,000 to build the centre.
Read full article on: BNamericas.com [subscription site], 19 Jan 2010
Colombian city Bucaramanga’s water utility Acueducto Metropolitano de Bucaramanga (AMB) inaugurated an educational water park to teach people about the proper use of water resources on 9 November 2009. Visitors to the park can see the treatment processes carried out by the utility and learn about the importance of contributing to the sustainability of hydrological resources.
Read the full article on BNamericas.com [subscription site], Nov 2009
Bolivia needs to invest US$1bn to build water treatment plants and in other projects to overcome water shortage problems during the next seven years, according to environment and water minister René Orellana. Insufficient rainfall, caused by climate change, is affecting farming activities in different regions.
Read the full article in BNamericas.com [subscription site], 11 Nov 2009
The first chlorination system designed for cities in poor countries is now operating in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, announced Andrew Weiss of the Washington, D.C.-based NGO International Action at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in New York last week. “It’s a great success,” said Weiss.
“Installed on 150 public water tanks in Haiti’s capital city, our chlorination system in supplying 400,000 residents with clean, safe water. This is the first time Haitians have had access to clean water for cooking and drinking,” commented Weiss, a board member of the group which installed the chlorinators.
Andrew Weiss received a certificate of recognition for International Action from former President Bill Clinton at the CGI meeting on September 25, 2009.
Clinton said, “I am serving the next two years as a US Special Envoy to Haiti…This is the best chance in my lifetime that Haitians have ever had to escape the chains of their past…”
Plumbers, Joanes Bastin and Emillio Bastien, hold up a pair of chlorine tablet feeders. Photo: International Action
Weiss described the clean water system as a two-foot tube holding 20 tablets of chlorine through which water passes into a neighborhood water tank. Simple test kits allow the local operator to measure how much chlorine is dissolved and to regulate the flow.
“This is a neighborhood system,” said Andrew Weiss, “simple enough to be run by local groups and sophisticated enough to clean the water for 10,000 users. A twice-larger version of the chlorinator can make water safe for 50,000 people. We have several of the larger chlorinators operating in Port-au-Prince and more than 100 of the smaller ones.”
“International Action hopes to distribute this clean water system to cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” said Weiss. “Currently, no one else has a system to treat urban neighborhood water tanks in poor countries, and our system is designed for this purpose.
“The tablet chlorinators will become a major breakthrough technology in public health,” predicted Weiss. “Waterborne diseases – cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, and chronic diarrhea – are the major cause of infant and child mortality today. Our chlorine kills these disease germs in water,” he stated.
Peru’s national sanitation authority Sunass has issued a positive report on a seawater desalination project submitted last year by UK waterworks firm Biwater and Japanese company Marubeni, state news agency Andina reported.
Biwater’s project now awaits a positive report from the finance and economy ministry (MEF) so that it can be declared of public interest. Once the project is declared of public interest, authorities will have a 90-day period to promote it, so that other private investors have the chance to express interest in carrying out the project. French, Spanish and Israeli firms have already approached the MEF regarding the project.
The desalination project would be the first to supply potable water on a large scale in Lima’s southern districts. In addition, the plant will be connected to state-owned water and sewerage utility Sedapal‘s network serving districts Villa El Salvador, Villa María del Triunfo and San Juan de Miraflores. The plant will use reverse osmosis to produce 100,000m3/d of drinking water.
Chilean natural gas distributor Metrogas and water utility Aguas Andinas started up operations at the country’s first biogas plant installed at the Farfana water treatment complex on the outskirts of Santiago. The plant will produce 24Mm3/y of biogas and replace about 14Mm3/y of natural gas. “This is the only place in the world where biogas produced by a water treatment facility ends up being used directly in homes,” Metrogas president Matías Pérez Cruz said, adding that the biogas plant is the largest in South America. Investment in the project totaled 3bn pesos (US$5.3mn).
Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 14 May 2009
Meanwhile in Brazil, officials from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Paraná state water utility Sanepar [have met] to discuss projects to expand power generation sewage treatment plants. [...] Since 2008, Sanepar has been producing electric power from its [Ouro Verde sewage treatment plant in Foz do Iguaçu]. The plant produces energy for its own operations and the surplus is sold to power company Copel. [Sanepar wants to] extend the successful experience of Foz do Iguaçu to all [its] sewage treatment plants.
Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 25 May 2009
A group of mayors from Peru’s southern Lima districts have asked President Alan García to speed up a project to build a seawater desalination plant in the area. [...] The [US$280mn] project was presented by UK waterworks company Biwater and is currently being evaluated by state agency for promoting private investment ProInversión.
[...] “We have the president’s support to speed up the project and, if possible, start works in August or September this year,” San Bartolo district mayor Jorge Marthelmes Camino was quoted as saying. The Biwater initiative would be the first desalination plant in Peru to be used for potable water distribution. It is designed to supply 350,000 people in districts San Bartolo, Punta Negra, Punta Hermosa, Pucusana and Lurín.
García declared seawater desalination for human consumption and irrigation a national objective at the inauguration of an international seawater desalination forum held in Lima this March [2009]. South Korean firm Doosan Heavy Industries [is interested] in building two [desalination] plants in Lima’s Ancón and Pucusana districts, [costing] US$1.5bn.
Critics of this kind of large-scale investment in developing new water sources often point to fact that it is more cost effective to reduce levels of unaccounted for water (leakages, illegal connections). It is estimated that 45% of the water produced in Peru is unaccounted-for. In 2008, water utility Sedapal, which serves Lima and neighboring city Callao, lost US$2mn daily due to illegal connections. “Too much of the water industry’s focus in the last 40 years had been on “big sexy capital works projects” and water treatment”, said Tim Waldron, chairperson of the International Water Loss Task Force, at the Water Loss 2009 conference in Cape Town. In that respect, Biwater’s involvement in the Lima desalination project will raise a few eyebrows as the company has been involved in numerous controversial water projects.
Brazil is on track when it comes to applying necessary investments to achieve its goal of universal potable water supply and sewage collection and treatment services in 20 years, the president of nati...
Latin American water utilities that are able to cover their costs through tariffs are most likely providing wider potable water coverage in their areas of competence, a paper by the UN Economic Commis...
Uruguay's state water utility OSE has awarded a tender for the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in the northwestern city of Salto to a consortium comprised of local companies Saceem and Cu...
Peru's authorities filed 86 water and sanitation projects in the national public investment system (SNIP) in the week from May 18-24, totaling 393mn soles (US$147mn), according to SNIP figures analyze...
The Guyanese government is carrying out an US$18mn investment program to upgrade the country's solid waste management practices and citizens' behavior in this regard, state news agency GINA reported. ...
The environmental evaluation service (SEA) of northern Chile's region II was set to vote on May 24 on the environmental impact study (EIS) for the Sierra Gorda aqueduct project. The regional SEA is...
On Friday, Chile's environmental supervision agency (SMA) ordered Canadian Barrick Gold (NYSE, TSX: ABX) to pay 16,000 of the country's annual tax units (UTAs), or US$15.8mn, in relation to the charge...
A WASH News blog maintained by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.
