The works on the WWTP go out to tender for a maximum of 8,068,655 €.

The Balearic Water Agency has put out to tender the works for the extension and improvement of the treatment of the Sa Pobla wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), for a maximum amount of 8,068,655.84 € (VAT included). This was explained during a visit to the facilities by the president of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, and the councillor for the Environment and Territory, Miquel Mir.

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The works will double the treatment capacity of the current flow, from 2,000 m³/day to 3,850 m³/day. In this way, the station will be able to serve a maximum population of 25,667 people, whereas it currently has the capacity to serve 15,000 people.

The main actions planned to consist of a new pre-treatment system, two biological treatment lines and secondary settling, a digester and a sludge thickener, as well as the remodelling of the dehydration and control buildings. In addition, the existing biological reactor and digester will be adapted as a storm tank to minimise the effects of the arrival of high flows of water during rainfall events that may occur due to the lack of a separate municipal rainwater network. Once the works have been awarded, the completion period is eighteen months.

The new WWTP will have an artificial wetland, which will act as a green filter. This is an additional treatment by means of a wet zone. In this way, the treatment plant will have an additional treatment of the treated water that will make it possible to reuse the entire flow of treated water for environmental use as an ecological flow for the S’Albufera Natural Park. The reuse of water will improve the quality of the water in the wetlands.

Francina Armengol highlighted the “ease of working together” shown by the Sa Pobla Town Council, whom she thanked for ceding the site for the enlargement of the treatment plant. The President of the Govern recalled that “one of the priorities of these two legislatures has been to invest in the water cycle in broad terms”, a fact that has allowed “the most important investment cycle in the history of these islands” to get underway.

This task has been carried out, as the President explained, “through institutional collaboration”, with initiatives that have allowed “all the institutions to become involved in a Water Pact to make the necessary investments possible” and to launch “calls for proposals that, from next year, will make 20 million euros available to local councils to be invested in eliminating water leaks in municipal distribution networks”.

Mir stressed that “the reuse of reclaimed water is one of the ways to adapt to the effects of the climate emergency, which means that we have less and less of this resource, which is scarce in our archipelago. Moreover, if this helps to improve the environmental conditions of one of the most emblematic protected natural areas of the Balearic Islands, such as s’Albufera de Mallorca, we are looking at a paradigmatic example of sustainability in the water cycle”.