Chile's first ever water reuse BOT to serve miners in Antofagasta

摘要

Chile's state-run sanitation company Econssa will initiate the prequalifica-tion process next month for a 35-year BOT project that will reuse treated waste-water from the northern coastal city of Antofagasta to serve mining companies in the surrounding desert region. The $140 million project will involve conveying pre-treated sewage from the existing wastewater treatment facility in Antofagasta to the Salar del Carmen area, where a new WWTP will be constructed. The WWTP will use activated sludge technology and will be built in phases, starting with an initial treatment capacity of 25,920m~3/d before reaching a final build-out capacity of 77,760m~3/d. The private sector developer will finance the project and assume demand risk for selling the treated wastewater to nearby mining companies, which require vast quantities of water for the extraction of minerals such as copper, lithium, and iron, and have in many cases developed costly large-scale seawater desalination facilities. Fernando Velasquez, director of development for Econssa, explained to GWI that this project will be the first large-scale wastewater reuse scheme in Chile. It is economically feasible because the ability to sell wastewater to miners will allow the developer to earn a higher fee than would be the case if the offtaker were a municipal entity, he explained.