WATER WILL FIND ITS WAY

Since 1997, some 3bn manats has been invested in the renovation of the republic's water supply and sewage system, including budget funds and loans from international financial organizations. Efforts are currently under way to rebuild water supply systems in Baku and all of Azerbaijan's regional centres and 700 or so villages. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has issued medium-term instructions to provide each of the republic's populated localities with round-the-clock supply of drinking water. To fulfil these instructions, large-scale efforts are under way to rebuild the water industry and to examine and introduce advanced technologies in this sector," said Qorxmaz Huseynov, the head of Azersu public corporation, who took part in the opening ceremony at the 2nd Caspian Water Technologies Exhibition and Conference (CATEC 2014) organized by the Iteca Caspian company. 

According to Huseynov, it is planned to invest about 10bn manats in upgrading the water sewage infrastructure in the near future. The cost of works will be determined more accurately when selecting specific projects and specifying the required amount of work and technologies, said the Azersu head. 

It is notable that, at the new stage of upgrading the country's water supply system, the organization is going to create more favourable conditions to attract local companies to bid in tenders for projects to be implemented with participation of international financial organizations. By way of comparison, there were only two local organizations among the top 10 contractor companies working with Azersu in the first quarter of 2013. Yet after last year's CATEC exhibition, the management of the national water operator decided to expand cooperation with them. According to data on 2013, there are local companies among Azersu's top five contractors. According to Huseynov, this is a vivid demonstration of how efficient such forums can be in creating favourable conditions for local companies to develop the domestic market. 

Looking at the scale of the initiatives by this country's major water operator, one can safely say that local companies will face no downtime or lack of orders. Thus for instance, Azersu is going to attract approximately 1.5bn dollars in the next couple of years alone to ultimately settle the issue of providing Baku with high quality drinking water. Huseynov has given assurances that no rise in tariffs for water supply is expected in Azerbaijan because the current level of tariffs is high enough for the company to run at a profit, especially given that the rate of bill payments by the population is rather high: 94 per cent. 

"Nowadays each resident of Baku daily consumes an average of 500 litres but not all this amount of water can reach the end user," said Adisirin Alakbarov, deputy director in charge of research at Azersu's research and design institute Vodoknal. 

"The main cause of water losses is old pipes with the leak reaching 56 per cent some sections of pipeline," said Q.Huseynov. "One more problem is citizens installing water tanks on the roofs of their house which also leads to serious losses. This is why, in all buildings switched over to round-the-clock water supply, the water operator together with Baku's executive branch are taking measures to remove such tanks," Huseynov said.  

Azersu's main goal is to reduce water losses which would make it possible to increase its consumption per resident of the capital. One option for settling these problems and ensuring sustainable water supply in the capital has been offered by a well-known French company which came up with a package of proposals for Azersu. In particular, it envisages a set of technical solutions providing round-the-clock water supply in Baku by the start of the 1st European Games in 2015. It is planned to furnish the capital's water supply network with a system of alerting sensors to spot leaks on time and thereby improve the efficiency of water supply. The French partner also suggests setting up a lab to test water quality, organize personnel training at a special centre and introduce remote reading water meters. 

Water supply modernization in the capital is a comprehensive process. Alongside with rehabilitating the distribution system, Azersu is implementing a number of other capital-intensive projects. Nearly three years has passed since the construction was completed of the 262 km long Oguz-Qabala-Baku water pipeline which can deliver up to 15 cu.m. of water per second to the capital. Another project no less in scale is to modernize Baku's water supply system. It was launched in 2011 at the Ceyranbatan water reservoir. It was designed to build the largest enterprise in the post-Soviet space capable of turning out 520,000 cu.m. of high quality drinking water every 24 hours from surface springs with the use of an ultrafiltration system. 

To prevent contamination of the pure water supplied to consumers by the Oguz-Qabala-Baku pipeline and from new purification facilities at the Ceyranbatan reservoir, Azersu is taking a set of measures to rehabilitate the city's water supply system, renovate water supply and treatment facilities and for fundamental reconstruction of existing water reservoirs and building new ones. 

Under this programme, efforts are in progress to renovate the +110 Sharq system of water reservoirs playing a big role providing the eastern part of Baku with water. The work started with rehabilitating and repairing 10 reservoirs of the system, each having a capacity of 12,500 cu.m. Major repairs have been fully completed on five reservoirs and they have been put into operation. 

Based in Baku's Nizami District, this system supplies drinking water to the major parts of the territory of Xatai, Nizami, Suraxani and Sabuncu districts. When the renovation of the system is over, more than 220,000 residents of those districts will get permanent access to drinking water. 

Similar works were carried out on the +69 Sharq water reservoir system early last year. 

At the same time, Azersu is implementing a project no less in scale to improve water supply in Baku's suburbs. In particular, it includes the construction of 10 new water reservoirs, each being 200,000 cu.m. in capacity. As part of efforts to rehabilitate the water supply system on the Abseron Peninsula, a new main water pipeline is being built to link the Ceyranbatan water reservoir with Pirallahi settlement. 

The implementation of just the first stage of the new Ceyranbatan-Balaxani-Ramana-Qala-Pirallahi water conduit line will provide steady and uninterrupted water supply for 130,000 residents of adjoining suburban settlements. When all sections of the pipeline are in place, the water supply of some 1m residents of the Abseron Peninsula will significantly improve.