The work on the proposed aqua-treatment plant by desalination of seawater to provide potable water to Site area and vicinities is expected to start in a couple of months.
Official sources in Sindh government told Business Recorder here on Friday that the project, that was in doldrums since long, has now come again in the government's priority list following submission of its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report by the private consultant company.
The project, aimed to meet the future water demand of the industrial areas of the metropolis, would be completed on public-private partnership basis. Keeping this in view, the contract for the establishment of the plant has already been awarded to a local subsidiary of a foreign research-based company having its head office in Norway.
The contractor company is also developing a 20,000 cubic metres per day desalination plant at Gwadar, sources said. The plant is proposed at the Hawkes Bay, about 30 km to the west of Karachi city centre on the Arabian Sea coast, and would have a capacity of 228,000 cubic metres per day, and would be developed in two phases.
Both phases, sources said, would add equal capacity of treatment to the plant that would be of 114,000 cubic metres per day. The power demand of the plant, about 46 MW for full production capacity, and 23 MW for each phase, will be specifically produced at the plant site by the company, sources said.
The plant would use Reverse Osmosis technology to remove salt and other minerals from seawater to obtain freshwater suitable for domestic and industrial consumption, sources added.
The plant would provide potable water specifically to Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (Site) and, for this purpose, two pipelines, each with a diameter of approximately 1.3 metre and length of around 33 km, would be laid from the desalination plant to the area, sources said.
They said that the contractor/investor company has submitted Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the project as it was bound to conduct it as per country's environmental laws.
The EIA report, providing environmental impact and mitigation measures to be implemented during construction and operation of the project, has been submitted to the Environment Protection Agency Sindh, sources said.
They added that the report was under review by the Authority's experts, and added that the EIA report has also been published on Internet for the study and comments of general public, stakeholders and independent experts.
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