Cascal NV - Xinmin, China

History - Located in the center of the Liaoning province, Xinmin is a developing satellite city of Shenyang (a strong industrial base), which is about 60 kilometres away. Xinmin has a total population of 680,000, of which 120,000 are in the urban area. Xinmin is strong agricultural base in China.

The area is rich in underground water resources, which are replenished by the Liu River (a tributary of the Liao River) that flows through the City. These water resources originally have high concentrations of iron and manganese which exceeds the National Drinking Water Standard-(NDWS) by eight to ten times and potentially threaten the health of the city residents if not treated. In addition, a historical shortage of water supply coverage has become a hindrance to the economic development in the area.

Partnership - To address theses problems, CWC (Xinmin) and Xinmin Water Supply Company (XMWSC) formed a joint venture company in July 2000 to develop the Liu River Water Supply Project.

The project consists of boring 10 new deep wells (80m in depth) along the Liu River bank; construction of 4.5 km raw water transmission pipeline and construction of a new 30Mld water treatment plant incorporating iron and manganese removal to ensure that the treated water from the plant is in compliance with the NDWS.

Developments - The Water Treatment Plant comprises:- Aeration
Rapid Gravity Filtration (eight back-washable units)
Chlorination Storage (two 3000m³ tanks)

These new facilities were commissioned in December 2001. In 2002, Xinmin CWC acquired XMWSC’s assets, and subsequently entered an Entrust Agreement with XMWSC to provide quality downstream services including network maintenance, billing and collection and customer service to the end-users in the city.

Under the new operation arrangement, XMWSC is responsible for expanding network coverage and developing a cohesive leakage management plan aimed at significantly reducing non-revenue water (NRW) levels.