Addis Abeba Water & Sewerage Authority (AAWSSA) installed a 15Km liquid waste pipeline from Bethel to the Kaliti catchment area at a cost of 108 million Br.
This is part of the expansion of the Kaliti catchment, which currently has the capacity to treat 7,500sqm of water a day. The expansion, still underway, will add 100,000sqm capacity at a separate pool in the same place.
Six local contractors were in charge of the work which involved installing 20cm pipes. These companies were Endalemaw Alemayhu Water Proofing, Saberkon Engineering, Gojo Engineering, Frezgi Tshaye Building & Water Proofing, Birhanu Feyesa Water Proofing as well as Akabod General Construction. AAWSA supplied the pipes to the companies, which provided the labour, both costs covered by the 108 million Br.
This project was undertaken following a feasibility study conducted by SWS Consulting Firm, a local consulting firm hired in 2013. The study suggested that the AAWSA needed to install 210Km of pipelines for the Kaliti catchment.
Based on this feasibility study, AWSSA plans to install 65Km of pipelines in the 2015/16 fiscal year, of which 32Km is contracted to Asers Construction Plc.
The earlier practice was transporting liquid waste into the centralised catchment through heavy trucks. There were old pipe lines in Piazza. But with the increasing population size and the limited capacity of the pipelines, they could not address the liquid waste management demand of the city, an anonymous source at AWSSA disclosed to Fortune.
City Administration and the World Bank are the financers of this expansion project which is taking place at the cost of 100 million dollars. Other than the Kaliti catchment, the city is also divided into two catchment areas, which are the Eastern treatment catchment at Yerer and the Southern catchment of Akaki. The eastern catchment has a capacity of refining 180,000 cubic metres of liquid waste per day, whereas the Chefe and south Akaki sub-spots of the Akaki spot have 24,000 cubic metres and 50,000 cubic metres refining capacities respectively.
The current work on the pipelines is meant to resolve the overlap that sometimes occurs between the water supply network and the liquid waste refining system in the city. However, the major challenge of the installation work are right of way issues, Dereje Mengesha, an expert of water supply engineering and project manager of Chefe Sub Catchment Waste Water Treatment Plant commented.He further explained that the city had insufficient liquid waste management pipelines previously because the area of focus was on water supply expansion.
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