The Ebro Hydrographic Confederation will begin starting next week the works to reactivate and get the water treatment plant located next to the Santa Ana dam, in the municipality of Castillonroi, ready. The facility, built in 2010, has still not entered service and is intended to supply 200,000 users of the Pinyana network, which includes the city of Lleida and about twenty more municipalities in Segrià and Noguera.
The works were tendered last November for 762,000 euros and have an estimated execution period of seven months. The action has been awarded to the company Ilerdagua, based in the Camí dels Frares industrial estate in Lleida, and the commission contract has already been signed between the CHE and the awardee. If the foreseen deadlines are met, the plant could come into operation this same year.
An infrastructure pending for more than a decade
The third phase of the supply to the municipalities of Pinyana from the Santa Ana reservoir concluded in 2016, but the water treatment plant was not activated. The CHE maintains that when the construction of the plant concluded, the associated infrastructures were not yet finished. Afterwards, the improvement of reserves in the Noguera Ribagorçana reservoirs made its use unnecessary for years.
That scenario changed with the drought from 2022 to 2024. It was then that the Mancomunitat demanded the commissioning of the facility. The basin authority argues that in periods of low reserves, water loses quality due to turbidity, a circumstance that made sense to recover a plant that had been built for more than a decade but was inactive.
Reform to improve the treatment of the water
The upgrade of the water treatment plant will incorporate a flocculation system and another for filtering to prevent colonization by zebra mussels. The device will be applied both to the main structure of the water network as well as to local pipes.
The action foresees a physicochemical process of flocculation, filtration, disinfection and sludge line with the objective of intercepting specimens and larvae of this invasive species. The presence of zebra mussel adds a pressure factor on a key infrastructure for water supply in the Lleida area.
Santa Ana and Canelles reopen to navigation
The CHE detected adult specimens of zebra mussel last year in the Santa Ana reservoir. Upstream, in Canelles and Escales, larvae were located. For this reason, Santa Ana was considered an affected reservoir and Canelles, a reservoir at risk.
The body has now lifted the navigation ban in the Santa Ana and Canelles reservoirs, a restriction that had been in force since November 1. The decision was adopted after verifying the operation of the boat cleaning stations of Àger and Alfarràs.
Users who want to navigate must have a responsible declaration and the cleaning ticket. The regulations oblige to pass through a cleaning station the first time one enters an affected or at-risk reservoir, upon leaving it, when participating in events or competitions in other reservoirs, or when requesting navigation in other hydrographic demarcations.
Currently, 27 reservoirs in the Ebro basin have cleaning devices. Of these, 18 are affected and 9 are at risk. In this context, the updating of the Santa Ana water treatment plant appears as a pending piece to reinforce the supply of Pinyana and adapt the network to a scenario marked by drought and by the expansion of the zebra mussel.