Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company (ADSSC) has appointed an engineering consultancy to provide contract administration and site overview services for one of the world’s largest underground pumping stations, located in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Mott MacDonald won the project that is due to be completed towards the middle of 2015. The pumping station will be over 100m deep and approximately 40m in diameter and will have an ultimate peak pumping capacity of approximately 3.3 million cubic metres per day.
The cornerstone of this plan is the Strategic Tunnel Enhancement Programme (STEP). The focus of STEP is a deep 41km long tunnel sewer and several systems of link sewers that will collect and transport wastewater to a main pumping station for onward treatment. At the downstream end of the deep tunnel an underground pumping station will be built to lift the sewage to the surface, and into newly constructed Independent Sewage Treatment Plants.
The pumping station will be housed in a large, deep structure at one end of the tunnel. The facility will also accommodate electrical and power generation facilities, operations and maintenance facilities, standby power fuel storage and pumping and a flow distribution facility.
“The UAE is the third largest consumer of water in the world after Canada and the USA,” said Peter Hall, Mott MacDonald’s project director. “There is a daily water consumption rate of nearly 550 litres per person in a region that receives less than 10mm of rain per year. Therefore, management and reuse of wastewater is a critical component to Abu Dhabi’s long-term sustainability.”