The board of directors of the state-owned company Aguas de las Cuencas de España (ACUAES) has authorized the signing of an addendum to the agreement signed in 2021 that increases the investment for sanitation and water treatment actions in Lanzarote to 37.5 million euros, reports the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.
The objective of the action is to provide the territorial demarcations of Arrecife, San Bartolomé, Yaiza and Tías with a comprehensive sanitation and treatment system that allows solving the problem of non-compliance with European directives on wastewater treatment and water protection, as well as regenerating treated wastewater to allow its reuse for agricultural irrigation, according to a statement.
To solve this problem, the development of two actions is planned: the improvement of sanitation, treatment and expansion of the Arrecife outfall, in execution since January 2023, and the expansion and improvement of the Tías treatment plant, in the final phase of project drafting, prior to its public information process for the purposes of affected goods and rights.
The addendum contemplates an increase in the investment foreseen in the two actions up to 37.5 million euros, which allows to face the increase in costs as a consequence of the extraordinary rise in prices of construction materials in recent years motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also, act on the outfall of the Tías WWTP, both in its land and submarine section of Puerto del Carmen, thus avoiding the affectation of threatened species, in compliance with the favorable environmental resolution of May 6, 2022.
In addition, it adapts the design of the Tías treatment plant, with the capacity to regenerate all the treated water so that it can be reused, and includes the new pollutant loads detected in the Arrecife WWTP.
The execution of the works of the Tías treatment plant is conditioned to the signing of the addendum authorized this Thursday, a procedure that has been possible after ACUAES sent a draft to the Cabildo and the Water Consortium of Lanzarote on December 2, 2022 for its approval, which has not been authorized by the General Assembly of the Consortium until June 19, 2024.
In relation to the action in Arrecife, whose estimated investment in the addendum reaches 16.5 million euros, the works are progressing both in the land outfall in Pereyra Galviaty street, and in the treatment plant itself, and work is being done on the pretreatment building and on the sludge line (mixed sludge building and on the structures of gravity and flotation sludge thickeners and the digester).
At the same time, the excavation work of the secondary settling tank, one of the primary settling tanks, the biological reactor and the regulating tank has been completed.
At the Board of Directors meeting held on July 26, the modification of the contract for the execution of these works was approved, which expands the treatment capacity of the WWTP to 126,000 equivalent inhabitants, maintaining the treatment flow rate planned in the project of 12,000 cubic meters per day compared to the current 8,000.
To allow the evacuation of the treated flows in the expanded treatment plant, work is being carried out on the Arrecife outfall, increasing the diameter of the land section in some areas and defective parts of the submarine section have been conditioned and repaired, as required by the environmental conditions.
The works in the Tías treatment plant will consist of expanding the capacity of the current installation to 12,000 cubic meters per day, achieving the necessary treatment capacity to cover all needs.
In addition, a new sanitation network will be executed that will collect and transport the discharges from the nuclei of Yaiza, Uga and Puerto Calero to the Tías WWTP, as well as a regenerated water pipeline that will allow the use of this resource in the surroundings of Yaiza and Uga.
In this WWTP, energy supply through solar panels and the future treatment of sludge by solar drying is planned. The estimated investment in the addendum for this action amounts to 21 million euros.
The actions are planned to be co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund ERDF, within the Pluriregional Operational Program of Spain (POPE).
