The tertiary works will allow 100% of the treated water to be used for the irrigation of greenhouses in the area. With this new philosophy, WWTPs are understood as resource factories that regenerate water for new uses, valorize all waste and produce energy for its own supply

The tertiary works that are going to be undertaken in the Roquetas de Mar Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) are going to mean an important step for the installation to advance towards the objective set by Hidralia, a company that manages the integral water cycle in Roquetas, to be an 'Ecofactory'.

Until now, the function of these treatment plants was to collect wastewater from a population in order to, through a series of processes, return it to the environment in the best possible conditions. However, Hidralia has changed its philosophy to consider these facilities as a resource 'factory' that regenerates water for new uses (irrigation, agricultural and industrial), which values ​​all waste (for example, generation of biogas from of the sludge resulting from treatment), and, finally, it produces energy for its own supply, generating a positive impact on its environment.

It is what the company calls 'Ecofactory', a new way of understanding the water purification process in which it is working to implement in all those municipalities in which it manages the water cycle.

Precisely the tertiary works will allow the Roquetas WWTP to have the necessary facilities to offer a quality effluent (treated wastewater) so that 100% of the water regenerated in the plant can be used for the irrigation of greenhouses. This makes the action a lever to drive not only the circular economy, but also to minimize the impact of periods of drought by avoiding the need to extract this resource from the aquifer and/or the desalination plant.

For this, equipment and devices of the purification process will be replaced in order to guarantee the operability of the tertiary use of the WWTP. The existing line will be extended and reclaimed water will be obtained which, in addition to meeting the requirements of the regulations, will have the highest possible quality in terms of reuse, reaching the classification of type A water, the maximum possible contemplated by both the current Spanish regulations on of water reuse as the next one of the European Parliament that will enter into force in 2023.

To achieve this, there is an investment from the Junta de Andalucía of more than six million euros and a term of execution of works, which will be carried out by Hidralia itself, of 10 months.

The action will ensure that the 8.3 hm3 that are treated on average now can be used 100% (up to a maximum of 11.3 hm3) for agricultural use.

In this way, the greatest beneficiaries will be the farmers in the area, including those who make up the Sol y Arena irrigation community, since this emergency work is motivated by guaranteeing water for crops. In the future, this water could be used to irrigate public gardens and golf courses, to wash down streets, to clean sewers... considerably minimizing the current impact on aquifers.

On the other hand, different subsidies are being requested in order to reduce electricity consumption and take advantage of available resources to reduce the carbon footprint. In fact, the IDAE has granted the installation of solar panels with a total of 100 KW of photovoltaics. In addition, the same body has been asked for aid for a very ambitious project that consists of converting the biogas that is produced in the digestion phase into electrical energy.

An energy that the plant itself will take advantage of for its energy supply and even for recharging its fleet of electric vehicles. In this way, a charging station is already installed in the installation, which will be able to make use of that energy coming from the plant itself.

To achieve an environmental improvement, it is necessary to defend biodiversity and in this sense Hidralia is working to install its first 'insect hotel' in its own treatment plant, as well as nests for birds and bats. An initiative that is part of the naturalization work of the facilities that Hidralia has in Roquetas and that will allow the transformation of a place whose predominant color is associated with gray to another in which green is the true protagonist.