John Culatto
GIBRALTAR has been forced to restart the bidding process for the much delayed sewage plant after the company it was dealing with last time went bankrupt.
If everything goes according to plan, the building of the new urban wastewater treatment plant could gather steam by next year, the government indicated.
The site chosen for the plant is the Brewery Crusher at Europa Point.
But the Department of the Environment said other locations ‘will be given equal consideration’ if they conform to their high standards.
The government said in a statement the sewage plant ‘must be designed to meet population and effluent flow increases over the next 20 years’.
The much delayed facility had been a GSLP manifesto commitment since 2011, but has still not been built.
It has given multiple reasons for this, mainly centred around the fact that finding a plant capable of dealing with saltwater was particularly difficult.
Gibraltar uses saltwater in its sewage system because of a lack of freshwater which costs a lot of money to produce.
Then, when the department of the environment chose a suitable companies, they went into liquidation, the government said.
“Given the change in circumstances and subsequent impacts on the procurement process, we have taken the view that initiating a new procurement process is necessary,” the government said.
Authorities now hope ‘significant progress’ will be made this year to get the sewage plant built ‘as soon as possible’.
Companies who wish to get more technical information about the project can find it on this government website.
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