The Communauté d’Agglomération du Pays Ajaccien (CAPA Ajaccio urban district council) has been engaged in a voluntary effort to restore the quality of water. To sustain this initiative and create the required conditions for a regional development project, the state and the CAPA have signed the “Horizon 2013 – Contribution of Ajaccio to cleaning up the Mediterranean” agreement to upgrade the agglomeration’s sanitation system so that it meets the standards of the European Union’s urban wastewater treatment directive.
Based on the “Horizon 2013” agreement, the purpose of the project is to reduce pollution from wastewater treatment and make structural upgrades, increase wastewater treatment capacity, and modernise wastewater treatment plants.
The Campo Dell’Oro wastewater treatment plant’s intention is to give the CAPA a cutting-edge wastewater treatment solution.
This construction is the affirmation of the community’s key commitment to implement sustainable environmental actions.
The objective of the Campo Dell’Oro plant is to meet regulatory obligations and ensure the development of the CAPA Ajaccio urban district council over the next 25 years.
With a capacity of 65,000 population equivalent, the new wastewater treatment plant is equipped with the R3F™ biological treatment process (Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor) which treats wastewater from the east Ajaccio neighbourhoods and surrounding communes. The R3F™ process helps gain space in water treatment facilities and reduce the duration of treatment by using a biofilm bed which is aerated to encourage biomass growth without clogging or beds needing to be scrubbed. This process requires less equipment and consumes less energy than common biofiltration methods.
After the sludge is separated by floating, the water is disinfected with ultraviolet rays before being evacuated into the sea through a 4.6-km outfall which ends at a depth of 60 m. This unit gives the people of Ajaccio a cutting-edge wastewater treatment solution.
Finally, the Campo Dell’Oro wastewater treatment plant is the first in France to benefit from the EcoSave initiative to measure and take into account the environmental impact of a water treatment plant at each stage in its life cycle, from design to construction and from operation to demolition.
Building a wastewater treatment plant fulfils the crucial requirement of protecting the environment and promoting water quality and sustainable development.
The new wastewater treatment plant has sufficient capacity to serve the needs of new areas and contribute to the region’s urban and economic development.
As a major investment of the “Horizon 2013” agreement, whose goal is to contribute to cleaning up the Mediterranean, the project gives the CAPA a leading-edge solution for the treatment of wastewater and sludge from the process.
This project successfully reconciled concern for the environment with economic needs. Sludge treatment using ultrasound reduces by about 20% the quantity of sludge produced and reduces the cost of its evacuation and treatment by as much. Also, as the sludge is digested by bacteria, the biogas thus produced powers five microturbines, which covers a significant percentage of the site’s electricity needs.
The plant also has an all new “Compteur Environnemental™” (“environmental meter”) software to identify and quantify remedial actions to be taken to reduce the environmental footprint.
In this project, everything was conceived to reduce carbon emissions. So, the distances between raw material suppliers (concrete plant located 3 km from the plant compared with 30 km on average in France for most sites) and the wastewater treatment plant were minimised. The steel was produced in Italy and the wood was from Corsica.
Client
The Communauté d’Agglomération du Pays Ajaccien consists of 10 communes (CAPA)
Implementation dates
March 2008 to March 2012
Capacity
40,000 population equivalent
(may be increased to 65,000 population equivalent)
Average discharge
8,000 m3/day
