The plant is the biggest infrastructure of its type in the country and will provide a service for more than one million people.
ACCIONA Agua, together with the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewer Systems (AyA), has inaugurated the ‘Los Tajos’ wastewater treatment plant, which will alleviate the pollution load of the rivers María Aguilar, Tiribí and Torres. The installation will be the biggest in the country and is ACCIONA Agua’s first project in Costa Rica.
The project, representing an investment of 45 million dollars (around 40 million euros), will provide a service to over a million people, i.e. 65% of the estimated population of the metropolitan area of the country’s capital city San José.
The plant is a primary (i.e. physical-chemical) Wastewater Treatment Plant that will fully treat sludge at an average daily flow rate of 2.81 m3/s and a daily maximum of 3.45 m3/s (Phase I).
Los Tajos is the core element in Phase I of the Environmental Improvement Project for San José, an action program that also covers the rehabilitation and extension of the sewerage network and secondary connections over 360 kilometers. It will mean a reduction of untreated sanitary water in the country from 20% to 0.1%. In Phase II, the Improvement Plan will clean up the basin of the river Tárcoles, reducing risks to public health and pollution of the aquifers in the area as well as preparing the city for the level of growth forecast for the next few years.
ACCIONA’s bid was selected in an international tender with strict economic, technical and environmental requirements, as the Environmental Improvement Project was supported by an international cooperation loan from the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
ACCIONA Agua was represented at the inauguration ceremony by Construction Director Luis Miguel Lopez-Mier, Business Development Director for Latin America Ignacio López, and Project Manager José Mª Trápaga. Also present were the President of the Republic of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera; the Japanese Ambassador to Costa Rica, Mamoru Shinohar; the CEO of the AyA, Yamileth Astorga; the Mayor of Costa Rica, Sandra Garcia Perez, and the Spanish Ambassador to Costa Rica, Jesús María Rodríguez-Andía.
Through this project, ACCIONA strengthens its commitment to sustainability and to the need to treat water as a scarce commodity. According to its Sustainability Report for 2014, ACCIONA recorded a positive water footprint of 532 hm3.