“As per the deal, the provincial water company is obliged to supply the steel firm with as much as 2,000 cubic meters of treated sewage per annum at a cost of 15 cents per cubic meters, which will change every year based on inflation rate,” the Energy Ministry’s news portal also quoted Darab Birnoondi as saying.
Close to 58,000 cubic meters of effluents are reclaimed in the province annually and more contracts will be signed with industrialists in s future, he added.
There is no denying that steelmakers are almost wiping out the limited water resources in the desert regions like Qazvin and Isfahan, and the need to recycle and reuse wastewater has become a do or die issue.
Iran is fast approaching a full-fledged water crisis. If efficient and sustainable solutions are not found, the industrial and agricultural sectors will soon become a thing of the past, independent environmentalists have already warned.
“An effective approach is to stop using the dwindling underground water tables and build as many wastewater treatment plants as possible to recycle not only industrial but household sewage,” Birnoondi said.
Isfahan Steel Company
The news service also quoted Hashem Amini, the head of Isfahan Steel Company, as saying that to reduce demand for freshwater in the arid province, an agreement has recently been signed between the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran (Abfa) and the steel firm.
“As per the contract, the steel company will expand wastewater network and plants in Fouladshahr, a district in Lenjan County and Imanshahr in the central district of Falavarjan County, in the next two years,” Amini said.
Once completed, the plants’ treated wastewater will be sold to the steelmaker through a 100-kilometer pipeline for 20 years.
According to the official, the project, aimed at conserving as much water as possible by drawing on unconventional resource, is estimated to cost $13 million and the steel producer will be supplied with at least 125 million cubic meters of recycled sewage in a 20-year period.
Fouladshahr plant has the capacity to process 14,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day and the expansion plan will raise the capacity by 1,000 cubic meters, all of which will be transferred to Isfahan Steel Company.