NewsWhore
03-03-2009, 05:20 PM
The Santo Domingo East aqueduct, a project that has experienced fits and starts and stumbles for ten years, is closing in on the start of operations, and is processing water at 75% of capacity, according to the Aqueduct and Sewer Corporation of Santo Domingo (CAASD).
Conceived to treat four cubic meters a second, some 90 million gallons a day, the infrastructure is pumping three cubic meters, because it started up the second of two modules at the water treatment plant. "Thanks to the trial phase of the second module, there has been a significant improvement," CAASD sub-director of operations Luis Salcedo told Diario Libre.
"We hope that by the time the project is finished the water deficit will be diminished by 90%, because there will always be work going on and things to do, the population growth has been highly accelerated and there are sectors where that aren't even any pipes." Nevertheless, the macro-system or joining of pipes, will still take "some months" before it get to barrios that are under study and supply more than a million inhabitants, explained Salcedo.
Construction began in 1999 and the 2002 census revealed that 1.8 million people lived in the province of Santo Domingo, including 878,000 in Santo Domingo East. The start up of this new infrastructure will take pressure off of the Valdesia-Santo Domingo Aqueduct that transfers water to Santo Domingo East on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
This project has spanned three Fernandez administrations and one of Hipolito Mejia. Conceived in 1971 and designed in 1995, the Santo Domingo East Aqueduct was assigned to the Dominico-Italian Consortium Impregilo-Civilcad in 1999 at a cost of RD$1,618 billion. In 2003, the job was quoted at RD$2.03 billion, without the distribution network that was quoted at RD$467 million. The Communications Department at CAASD said that now the price tag will be close to RD$5 billion of which RD$4.844 have been spent.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)
Conceived to treat four cubic meters a second, some 90 million gallons a day, the infrastructure is pumping three cubic meters, because it started up the second of two modules at the water treatment plant. "Thanks to the trial phase of the second module, there has been a significant improvement," CAASD sub-director of operations Luis Salcedo told Diario Libre.
"We hope that by the time the project is finished the water deficit will be diminished by 90%, because there will always be work going on and things to do, the population growth has been highly accelerated and there are sectors where that aren't even any pipes." Nevertheless, the macro-system or joining of pipes, will still take "some months" before it get to barrios that are under study and supply more than a million inhabitants, explained Salcedo.
Construction began in 1999 and the 2002 census revealed that 1.8 million people lived in the province of Santo Domingo, including 878,000 in Santo Domingo East. The start up of this new infrastructure will take pressure off of the Valdesia-Santo Domingo Aqueduct that transfers water to Santo Domingo East on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
This project has spanned three Fernandez administrations and one of Hipolito Mejia. Conceived in 1971 and designed in 1995, the Santo Domingo East Aqueduct was assigned to the Dominico-Italian Consortium Impregilo-Civilcad in 1999 at a cost of RD$1,618 billion. In 2003, the job was quoted at RD$2.03 billion, without the distribution network that was quoted at RD$467 million. The Communications Department at CAASD said that now the price tag will be close to RD$5 billion of which RD$4.844 have been spent.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)