Delivering a sustainable wastewater solution for a rural community

• Biwater
• Solutions
• Khenifra, Morocco

• 
  Project type Wastewater
• 
  Area served Rural; mountainous; inland
• 
  Population served 150,000
• 
  Status Complete (2014)

Existing wastewater treatment in Morocco has largely relied on facultative and maturation lagoons (large lakes where sewage sits for long periods allowing breakdown by ultraviolet light and aerobic/anaerobic digestion processes), which has led to a poor quality output and odour control issues in populated areas. In seeking to address these issues, Morocco’s Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable – Branche Eau (ONEE) asked Biwater to design and construct a new wastewater facility with trickling filters – the country’s first to incorporate trickling filters.

At each stage of the project, Biwater worked closely with ONEE to ensure that the solution provided was appropriate for the rural community it would be serving, while incorporating a number of treatment processes to minimise ongoing operational costs.

The project reflected heightened environmental awareness in Morocco, and the country’s efforts to utilise alternative technologies to improve wastewater treatment provisions for all. Proud of the project’s accomplishments, ONEE promoted the use of trickling filters, and other high efficiency and low cost technologies utilised in the project, to other ONEE regional branches to improve knowledge transfer, but also externally to local citizens to convey the project’s success more widely.

Works:

Overall plant view during construction

Sludge drying beds under construction

Close-up view of trickling filter

Imhoff tank

Imhoff tank inlet

Local area:

Technical summary: