ACCIONA has celebrated one of the most important construction milestones of the Carén reservoir expansion project in Chile: the topping out of the dam, which indicates that the wall has reached the highest point of its construction.

Codelco’s El Teniente Division awarded ACCIONA the contract for the expansion of the seventh stage of the Carén reservoir in December 2021 for a value of US$ 62 million, adding to the broad portfolio of projects that the company is carrying out for the national mining company Codelco, for which it is performing underground works at the Chuquicamata mine and at Rajo Inca, in the El Salvador Division.

The expansion of the Carén reservoir, located in the municipality of Alhué, in the Metropolitan Region, requires the execution of several civil works to raise the height of the reservoir’s earthen wall by 62 meters, from 175 to 237 meters, and to reinforce it by 32 meters, from elevation 128 to elevation 160.

The work focused on moving earth of varying grain size and plasticity, some from the project’s existing quarries and some from external sources. During the raising of the dam, each of the materials used has had a specific function, as an impermeable material, as core fill or as filter material, arranged vertically along the entire length of the dam.

The Carén reservoir covers an area of almost 23,000 hectares and is part of the main infrastructure of the production system of Codelco’s El Teniente Division.