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The largest water project of the decade in Narva shall provide high-quality drinking water to 58,000 inhabitants

On 28 October, the completion of an essential large-scale water project that will improve the water quality throughout the city was celebrated in Narva. Merko constructed a new water treatment plant for the city and reconstructed the water intake of the Mustajõgi river.

“The quality of drinking water in Narva used to be extremely bad and the entire infrastructure was in a sorry state. Fortunately for us, we can now talk about this being in the past tense. Although the Narva project is one of the largest water projects in Estonia this decade, the efforts geared towards providing people with clean drinking water will also continue in the coming year, when we will allocate 20 million euros for water economy,” said Marko Pomerants, Minister for the Environment.

Aleksei Voronov, member of the Management Board of AS Narva Vesi, said that the inhabitants of Narva are now being supplied with drinking water that conforms to all current standards and originates from one of the most state-of-the-art water treatment plants in Northern Europe. Voronov explained that the selection of the technology suitable for the treatment of raw water taken from the Narva River was preceded by in-site pilot tests in order to determine the most appropriate technology for the local environment.

The Mustajõe water intake was reconstructed and the new water treatment plant was built by Merko Ehitus AS (general construction) in cooperation with the Danish company Krüger AS (technology). Tiit Roben, Chairman of the Management Board of Merko Ehitus Eesti, says this is the most powerful water treatment plant that Merko has ever constructed and one of Merko’s largest contracts in the Narva region. “In terms of construction technology, the water treatment plant with the capacity of up to 20,500 m3/d is very challenging both as a concrete structure and for its technological solution; the international dimension of the project made it even more challenging. Raw water is pumped into the water treatment plant from the Mustajõgi river, which is about 26 kilometres away and the water will flow downstream through the entire treatment process until it reaches clean water reservoirs,” said Roben. Owner supervision was exercised by Keskkonnaprojekt OÜ and Telora-E AS.

Water and sewage pipelines were reconstructed and a separate rain water channel was constructed by Astlanda Ehitus AS and Viimsi Keevitus AS. In total, 43 km of water supply pipes, 33 km of sewage pipes and 11 km of separate rainwater pipes were constructed. Owner supervision was exercised by Keskkonnaprojekt OÜ, Korbovek OÜ and Infragate OÜ.

The Narva project, which was launched in 2008, was the largest water project in Estonia this decade, both in terms of the number of people who will benefit from it and the size of the investment. The total value of the project is 45.5 million euros. Of this, 29.4 million euros were received via the Environmental Investment Centre as a contribution granted from the Cohesion Fund, 11.4 million euros were allocated from Narva city budget and another 4.7 million euros from the funds of AS Narva Vesi who managed the project.