The Czech Republic Ministry for Regional Development appointed the UK consultancy Mott MacDon-ald as engineer for developing and improving sewerage and drainage systems in Brno, the country's second largest city.
The g 39-million development is part of an ISPA-funded project to help the Czech Republic upgrade its environmental infrastructure in accordance with European Union directives. The Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession (ISPA) is a financial instrument used by the EU to assist candidate countries in preparing for accession.
The city of Brno has 400,000 inhabitants and produces some 30 million m3 of wastewater a year, which is conveyed via 974 km of public sewers and 15 pumping stations to a treatment plant in the southern suburbs.
Currently, sewerage is not available to the whole population and inadequately sized sewers in the existing system affect the quality of ground and surface water.
Mott MacDonald, in joint venture with the local company VRV, will focus on transferring knowledge to the public implementation unit, supervise construction of the works and complete the services duct network. The works include using open-cut methods to construct more than 21 km of foul sewers in the Lisen area that will connect 9,200 residents to the main sewerage system, along with completing the main and trunk sewers under busy streets in addition to constructing secondary ducts using tunnelling methods for drainage of the historic city centre. The project will be completed in December 2005.
