Maynilad upgrades La Mesa plant

West Zone concessionaire Maynilad Water Services Inc. has completed the upgrade of sedimentation basin at its La Mesa plant to improve treatment capacity in its serviced areas.

The Pangilinan-led company said it has finished one out of the 12 sedimentation basins at the La Mesa treatment plant 1 in Quezon City.

The 12 sedimentation basins at La Mesa 1 are being fitted with tube settlers and sludge scrapers, increasing the plant’s capacity to address high turbidity in the raw water during the rainy season.

“We are upgrading one basin at a time, because we cannot shut down the plant and interrupt water service to give way to the rehabilitation work,” Maynilad chief operating officer Randolph Estrellado said.

“While there are 11 more basins to go, this is a significant milestone in the rehab project of La Mesa and our ability to respond to the challenges of climate change,” he added.

This is part of the company’s overall P7-billion rehabilitation project for La Mesa treatment plants 1 and 2, which produce about 2,400 million liters of water per day for some nine million customers.

Aside from rehabilitating the sedimentation basins to improve treatment capacity, other upgrades being done at LMTP 1 and 2 are the retrofitting of structures for enhanced earthquake resiliency, and the automation of processes for more reliable operations.

Targeted to be completed by 2020, the upgrade would enhance the treatment technology used to address the problem of increasing turbidity levels in the raw water coming from Angat and Ipo dams.

Maynilad is upgrading the capacity of the treatment plants from only 300 nethelometric turbidity units (NTU) to 2,000 NTU.

Turbidity level refers to the sediment content in the dams’ raw water, which increases either due to soil erosion in the watersheds after heavy rains or due to the scraping of mineral deposits from the dams’ bottom during drought periods.

The La Mesa treatment plants 1 and 2 are among the three world-class water treatment plants that Maynilad operates, both being ISO 9001:2000-certified.

Maynilad is the largest private water concessionaire in the country in terms of customer base. It serves the areas of Caloocan, Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Valenzuela, Navotas, Malabon, and certain portions of Manila, Quezon City, Makati and Cavite.

Maynilad is owned and managed by Maynilad Water Holdings Co. Inc. a joint venture between Metro Pacific Investments Corp., DMCI Holdings Inc., and Marubeni Corp.