News
Indian contract for United Utilities Australia
28th March 2003
The water treatment plant design that provides high quality filtered River Murray water to more than 150,000 regional South Australians has been adopted for a new water treatment facility in India.
Adelaide-headquartered United Utilities Australia, the lead company in Riverland Water, which financed, designed, built and operates water treatment plants along the Murray from Renmark to Tailem Bend is providing design input and other services for the new facility, located at Tirupur in the state of Tamil Nadu, southern India.
The project, which is India’s first water related Public Private Partnership project, involves UUA’s parent, UK based multi-utility company United Utilities and its joint venture partner, the major Indian enterprise Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd from Bombay
It will include the construction of an intake from the local Cauvery river, provision of a water treatment plant with a design output of 185 million litres a day, a major pipeline, service reservoirs distribution network, a small wastewater treatment plant and pumping stations.
The joint venture has a 30-year concession to maintain and operate the assets.
“Although the raw water source is generally of low turbidity, there are occasional spikes during the monsoon season. Our South Australia treatment plants were specifically designed to handle variable water quality, including high turbidity levels. For that reason and because of our specialist technical knowledge, we have been asked to oversee design aspects of this particular project,” said Graham Dooley, Managing Director of United Utilities Australia.
UUA has already relocated a senior design engineering personnel from Adelaide to Tiripur. Its staff will also be involved in commissioning when the plant is completed late in 2005 and operations will be supervised from Adelaide.
Indian companies will carry out construction work.
Tiripur is known as the ‘Manchester of South India’ because it is a major textile producing area where world famous brands such as Reebok and Nike and manufactured for global markets.
The project will provide water for the textile manufacturers and over 1.6 million residents in the Tiripur municipal area and surrounding villages.
Water is currently supplied from boreholes, a practice which is causing the water table to sink in a 35 km radius of the town, supplemented by supplies carried in by tanker.
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