The Council of Tenerifethrough the Insular Water Council, has awarded the contract for the drafting of the project for a new Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) for the Orotava Valleywhich will process up to 10,000 cubic meters of wastewater each day, coming from the municipalities of La OrotavaLos Realejos and Cross port. This first phase of the renovation of the waste management system generated by the more than 100,000 inhabitants of this region has a budget of 108,251 euros and a completion period of six months. The new treatment plant, which will be located next to the current one in Punta Bravawill complete the so-called phase 1 of the Valle complex and will be complemented in the future with another infrastructure capable of treating another 10,000 cubic meters per day.
The construction of this infrastructure is included in the Hydrological Plan of Tenerife, which states that “the sanitation model of the Orotava Valley It is made up of a set of infrastructures that make up its territorial sanitation system, which allows the wastewater from the municipalities of Puerto de la Cruz, Los Realejos and La Orotava are collected and transported to the Industrial water treatment (WWTP) of the Valle de La Orotava, located in Puerto de la Cruz, where the secondary water purification treatment is carried out.
Four Olympic swimming pools
The construction project for the new wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in the Valle de La Orotava Hydraulic Complex must guarantee the secondary treatment of 10,000 cubic meters each day, the equivalent of four Olympic swimming pools, through membrane bioreactors. In addition, the current WWTP, located in Punta Brava, must be kept operational at all times. The Cabildo recognizes that “given the scarcity of space available inside the Hydraulic Complex of the Valley of La Orotava, motivated by the existence of the current treatment plant, the implementation of the new facilities will have to be projected in the free space at present, so that they do not interfere with the current process. It will also be necessary to guarantee the compatibility of the design carried out with future expansions of the plant. It will be necessary to study the need to carry out emptying and maintenance tasks within the complex
«Currently this treatment plant, after the years that have elapsed since its creation, and the high real biological load of the flows collected, is at the end of its useful lifedealing with great difficulties with a flow that ranges between 6,500 and 7,000 cubic meters per day”, according to the island councilor for Sustainable Development, Javier Rodriguez.
The current treatment plant Punta Brava “It lacks the necessary capacity and it is to be expected that the situation will worsen once the works to expand the network of collectors in the Valley have been completed, which will be carried out by ACUAES, so it is urgent to start up a new treatment plant,” warns the island counselor.
