New water treatment plant in Tolosa

The inauguration was chaired by Tomas Wulkan, EVP for Decor BA, Elena Moreno Zaldibar (Vice-Advisor for the Environment of the Basque Government), Ignacio Asensio Bazterra, (the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa’s councilor responsible for Environment and Hydraulic Works), and the plant Management team.

Historically, the environment respect has been a constant in Tolosa mill and an evidence of this is that, in 1978, at that time Papelera Calparsoro, was the first industry in Gipuzkoa installing a treatment plant for the wastewater of the mill.

Although the quality of the effluent output from the first treatment plant is within the range fixed by the Integral Environment Authorization, the plant aimed to improve it by building a secondary biological treatment.

For that purpose, the responsible team of the project trusted in Veolia Water Technologies to perform the expansion works of the sewage treatment plant.

The new plant, with a treatment capacity of 200 cubic meters per hour, combines the technologies AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR of moving bed for the biological water cleaning and the Actiflo™ technology for the water clarification by decantation ballasted by microsand. The works started in December 2016 and finished, as scheduled, one year later. Both technologies, patented by Veolia, leads an effluent with a much higher quality than required by the actual regulations concerning water discharges to the rivers.

The project was co-financed by the European Union, via the European Fund for Regional Development and the Environment Department of the Basque Government.

The collected results show that the fixed aim was achieved.