ACCIONA Strengthens Water Treatment Business In Ecuador

• The company is to build the Loja plant for 13.4 million euro
• With this project, ACCIONA Agua will serve 1.75 million people in Ecuador

ACCIONA Agua, in consortium with BTD, has been chosen by the Loja municipality, with funding from the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), to build a wastewater treatment plant in Loja (Ecuador) under a turnkey contract worth 16.6 million dollars (about 13.4 million euro).

The plant will have a maximum throughput of 1.45 m³/s, serving a population of up to 350,000.

It will be located in Loja, capital of the province and canton of the same name in southern Ecuador, on a 10.5-hectare site area on the east bank of the Zamora river, about a kilometre north of the Sauces Norte suburb, on the outskirts of the city. Loja is a member of the “Cities Footprint” (Huella de Ciudades) project, a joint effort by a number of Latin American cities to pursue low-carbon development through a portfolio of projects in key areas, incorporating measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation in order to reduce carbon and water footprints.

Construction of the plant is planned in two stages: the first (being announced now) involves the infrastructure which will serve the current population and control the river pollution problem. The second stage (to be carried out in the future) will consist of using the sludge obtained from waste water treatment to produce energy to fuel the plant itself.

Experience In Ecuador
ACCIONA has had an office in Ecuador since 2012, and has already obtained significant contracts there in the areas of Water and Construction. At the end of 2015, Quito city awarded the company a contract to build the second phase of the city's Metro Line 1 for 1.538 billion US dollars (about 1.4 billion euro).

The contract comprises the construction of a 22 kilometre tunnel with 13 new stations, as well as depots and workshops and the facilities needed to start operation. The civil engineering work for La Magdalena and El Labrador stations was carried out by ACCIONA Infrastructure in the first stage of the project.

Last year, the Guayaquil municipal water and sewage company awarded ACCIONA Agua a contract to build the La Pradera pumping station as part of the infrastructure for the future wastewater treatment plant in Las Esclusas (Guayaquil); it will replace the current pumping station and help to upgrade the sewer network.

The project (financed by the European Investment Bank) will be carried out by ACCIONA Agua under a turnkey format; with a 22 million US dollar budget (about 20 million euro), and is part of a project to provide universal sewerage service to one million people (a third of the total population of Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city) who live north of the city centre.

In 2016, the autonomous decentralised government of the Esmeraldas canton awarded the ACCIONA-BTD consortium a contract to build, expand and upgrade water capture and potabilisation infrastructure in Esmeraldas, the capital of the northern province of the same name, for approximately 30 million dollars (about 27 million euro). The 24-month turnkey contract, which will benefit a population of more than 200,000 and is financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), includes a drinking water treatment plant and an electric substation.

In addition, in late 2017 ACCIONA completed the Ibarra wastewater treatment plant, in northern Ecuador, with a capacity of 43,200 m³ per day, serving an equivalent population of almost 200,000 people. The plant was designed to rigorous environmental standards using advanced biological nutrient elimination processes.