The construction of a wastewater treatment plant in District 22 of Tehran with a capacity of 900 cubic meters per day started at the weekend, managing director of the provincial sewerage company said.
Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony, Mohammad Hassan Karimi added that the project is estimated at about $1 million, Mehr News Agency reported.
“With the launch of the project, a population of around 5,000 people will be covered by the plant,” he said.
“Built on 6,800 square meters, the treatment plant will be developed with the help of the municipality of District 22.”
District 22 of Tehran Municipality is the westernmost urban district of Tehran, which is located in northwest Tehran.
The project to connect all the 22 districts of Tehran to the wastewater network is one of the largest projects in the country with nearly 9,000 kilometers of sewage transmission lines linked to 22 treatment plants in 22 districts of the sprawling capital.
According to Tehran Sewerage Company, the construction of 70% of the network has so far been completed.
There are plans to build another small-scale plant in District 4, in the easternmost part of the capital.
The treated wastewater of each district will be used to water green spaces in the same district.
Tehran Municipality annually draws 80 million cubic meters from underground water tables for green spaces, which will gradually be replaced with treated wastewater.
Water reserves in Tehran are estimated to hold 1.06 billion cubic meters of water, 70% of which come from surface water and 30% from groundwater.
Currently, close to 3.3 million residents have access to Tehran’s wastewater network and the number is expected to reach 11 million when the infrastructure is ready by 2023.
An estimated $2 billion have been spent on Tehran’s wastewater network development plan since 1995.
The grid can help prevent the pollution of underground water resources and reduce the need to tap into dwindling underground water tables.
The expansion of wastewater network has continued in the sprawling capital for decades, as the population expands and imposes extra burden on utilities that are already stretched.
If wastewater is not properly treated, it can have dire consequences on human health and the environment.
Recent Projects
Last year, Firouz Bahram Wastewater Treatment Plant in Eslamshahr County in the southwest and Pardis Wastewater Treatment Plant 20 km east of the capital were launched.
Before the new facilities became operational, water reclamation capacity in the capital was 250 mcm per year and now it has reached 544 mcm.
Firouz Bahram plant includes a 1,700-km sewage collection network, 1,200-km sewer tunnel and an effluent treatment plant for 285 million cubic meters of wastewater a year.
Built over 60 hectares, the plant was built by the Tehran Regional Water Company and will treat wastewater produced by 3.1 million people in 12 districts in the metropolis that has expanded in all four directions in the past half century.
Treated effluent from this facility will be used for irrigating urban green areas, farming and industries in the southern areas.
The Pardis plant, which was built over 11 hectares, can annually treat 9 million cubic meters of sewage produced by 250,000 people.
Both plants use activated sludge (AS) method to process sewage. AS consists of three main components, namely an aeration tank, a settling tank and a return activated sludge.
National Status
A total of 220 wastewater treatment plants operate in Iran and total sewage treatment capacity has reached 11 million cubic meters per day.
About 30 plants are in different stages of construction and should come on stream within two years.
Over 7.5 billion cubic meters of usable water are annually produced, of which 4.3 bcm are wasted. Less than 25% of wastewater are recycled, which demands focus and responsibility from those in charge of water affairs.
Iran’s wastewater output is estimated at 1.2 billion cubic meters per year and 70% of water used by households can be reused with the help of wastewater treatment plants.
While 48% of the country’s treated wastewater are used for farming, about 45% of it enter surface waters, less than 0.5% is utilized by industries and 5% are used for watering urban green space.
Over 63,000 km of wastewater pipelines have been laid across the country and 295 cities are connected to the wastewater network.
