Veolia Water Technologies announced that it has been selected by South West Water, a water and wastewater service provider in the United Kingdom, to deliver the first desalination plant in the English county of Cornwall.
The proposed desalination plant would be capable of producing up to 20 million liters of water per day (5.3 million gallons daily), accounting for roughly 40% of the current water demand in Cornwall.
The region’s water resources were stressed by recent record levels of drought. The proposed desalination plant, the first of its kind in Cornwall, will help to provide a resilient source of water to protect the region from the negative effects of drought.
Veolia will manufacture and supply the proposed desalination plant.
“The extreme weather conditions we faced last year means we are taking proactive steps to develop climate-independent sources of water,” said David Harris, drought and resilience director for South West Water in a press release. “This will help us to become less reliant on rainfall and more resilient against the impacts of climate change in the future.”
The proposed desalination process would extract seawater from St Austell Bay, which will be initially treated at the desalination plant. This treated water would then be transferred to the water treatment works at Restormel, Cornwall for additional treatment before being circulated to 300,000 of Cornwall’s habitants.
