Spanish company to build Baja California's first large desal plant
A Spanish company has been selected to build and operate Baja California’s first large-scale desalination plant, a reverse osmosis facility that is expected to supply drinking water to more than 96,000 people in Ensenada.
Efraín Muñoz, head of the Baja California State Water Commission, said in an interview on Friday that OHL Medio Ambiente Inima this week was awarded the contract to design, build and operate the $41.5-million plant.
The plant’s planned capacity is for 5.7 million gallons a day, and is expected to begin operating by the end of 2013. Inima built and operates the Los Cabos reverse osmosis desalination plant, currently Mexico’s largest, with a capacity for five million gallons a day.
The planned Ensenada plant, known as El Salitral, is to be located on state-owned property and would serve the community of Maneadero, located south of the port of Ensenada.
The cost of building the desalination plant would be shared by Inima and Mexico’s federal government. Under the terms of the contract, expected to be signed later this month, the company would operate the plant for 20 years. Muñoz said the state received seven bids for the project.
Planners have for years been concerned about the scarcity of water in Ensenada, which is supplied mainly by aquifers. “The aquifers are growing increasingly saline, and the availability of water in Ensenada is more and more limited,” Muñoz said.
In another measure aimed at augmenting and diversifying Ensenada's water sources, the state for the first time plans to bring water from the Colorado River to the city through the Guadalupe Valley. Muñoz said that the idea is to build a pipe that would lead from Tecate to the Guadalupe valley, then transfer the water to Ensenada through an existing aqueduct.
From the San Diego Union Tribune