Aug 252014
 

Two wastewater treatment plants have been in the news recently. The first is the $230 million Agua Prieta wastewater treatment plant, located north of Guadalajara in Jalisco, which was formally inaugurated last month. It is the first stage in a plan to restore the heavily polluted Santiago River back to health. The Santiago is the outflow from Lake Chapala and receives pollutants from the industrial zone of El Salto outside Guadalajara. The initial capacity of the Agua Prieta plant is 6,500 liters/second, almost all of which is returned to the river after treatment.

The plant was built by a consortium led by ICA subsidiary Conoisa, Atlatec, and Servicios de Agua Trident under a 20-year concession. President Enrique Peña Nieto claims on his government webpage that, “Integrated, sustainable water management is a government priority. The challenge is even greater because almost 50% of the wastewater returned to the environment does not undergo any form of treatment… The Agua Prieta Wastewater Treatment Plant in Zapopan… [will] improve the quality of life of 3.3 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara… It will treat 82% of the wastewater in the area, and 100% when the complementary sewage works are completed.”

agua-prieta-wastewater-According to government figures, waste water treatment coverage at the national level is currently 50.3%, with a 2018 target of 63%. Agua Prieta has raised national coverage to 53.3%, and will boost it to 54.3% once the plant is operating at full capacity and treating 8,500 liters/second of wastewater. At the state level, Jalisco is now treating 32% of its wastewater.

The Agua Prieta plant is currently the largest of its kind in Mexico and is powered by biogas derived from the wastewater sludge. However, an even larger plant is under construction, in the state of Hidalgo in central Mexico. The Atotonilco Wastewater Treatment Plant is being built by a consortium, including Mexican construction companies ICA and IDEAL, Mitsui subsidiary Atlatec and Spanish firm Acciona Agua, that won the concession to design, build, and operate this plant for 22 years, at which point the plant will be transferred to federal ownership. Work began in 2010 and is due to be completed by 2015.

The Atotonilco Wastewater Treatment Plant will be the largest wastewater plant in Latin America and one of the largest in the world, with a biological treatment capacity of 23,000 liters/second (1.99 million m3/day). The wastewater treatment is performed by a series of conventional processes, with an additional chemical process during the rainy season. Treated waters from this plant are already being used in agriculture without any additional cleaning steps. The plant is self-sufficient in terms of energy usage, since it converts the methane offgas from the wastewater sludge into electrical energy.

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