Canada: The UK company WRc Group signed an exclusive agreement with Canadian-based The Pressure Pipe Inspection Company (PPIC) to provide its Sahara® transmission main leak location service to the North American water market. Sahara is a patented system that pinpoints the location and estimates the magnitude of leaks in water transmission lines.
The system works by inserting a probe into a live transmission main. In operation, water flow carries the probe through the pipe. The system locates leaks as small as one litre per hour in real time by identifying distinctive acoustic signals generated by leaks in the pipe wall, joints or steel welds. Following leak detection, the sensor head pinpoints the location using the PipeSpy2000™ locater unit. Pipe lengths up to 2,000ft can be survey with a single insertion depending on pipe configuration.
Canada: The Public Works Department of Fulton County, Georgia, USA, selected Zenon to supply its membrane bioreactor system to treat 15 million gallons of wastewater per day at the world's largest MBR plant. The MBR will also provide high-quality effluent for reuse applications. New reuse facilities are also being planned in the US states of Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico and Washington.
Demand for reuse quality water is gaining momentum in water-short Arizona, where the city of Tempe is undergoing commercial and industrial growth. The city decided to retrofit its conventional Kyrene Reclamation Facility while increasing the capacity to 9 mgd using the Zenon MBR.
Retrofitting the facility with Zenon's MBR will allow use of a considerable portion of the basin infrastructure. MBRs require a fraction of the space of a conventional wastewater treatment plant while treating at least a third more capacity. Once completed in the first quarter of 2006, this plant will become one of the largest operating MBR facilities in the world. Zenon is based in Oakville, Ontario.
USA: McElroy Manufacturing, Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, reached an agreement with Mr. Anatoli Kim and Maran Engineering to represent McElroy in Kazakhstan and Eastern Europe, including the NIS countries. Mr. Kim has served as the plant manager for Chevron Munaigas Inc.'s (CMI) Atyrau Polyethylene Pipe Plant for the past three years. CMI's Atryrau pipe plant is a McElroy distributor and supplies polyethylene pipe and McElroy fusion equipment for Kazakhstan and surrounding markets.
Mr. Kim and Maran Engineering will be based in Almaty, Kazakhstan and will serve Kazakhstan, Uzbeckistan, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and other NIS countries, and Eastern Europe.
US Virgin Islands: The Government of the US Virgin Islands awarded Veolia Water, the water division of Veolia Environnement, based in Paris, France, a g110-million contract to manage the wastewater treatment services of St. Thomas and St. Croix Islands. This 20-year contract marks the first public-private partnership awarded by island officials, who chose Veolia Water North America to design, build and operate a new wastewater treatment facility on each island.