to the adjacent Swanbank Power Station where it is converted into electricity via a modified boiler.
HOCHTIEF Construction is part of the consortium building the Newhaven energy recovery facility on the southeast coast of England. Planned to enter testing in spring 2011, the facility was designed with two incineration lines, each with a capacity of 14.5 metric tons per hour. It treats 210,000 metric tons of waste a year, generating electricity for 25,000 homes. Minimizing groundwater contamination posed a particular challenge which was mastered using a construction technique specially developed by the project team.
Desalination
In July 2007, John Holland undertook to design, build, operate and maintain a desalination plant in Kurnell, a suburb of Sydney. Australia has suffered severe drought for a number of years and water resources for the population are limited. Water restrictions prohibit people in the region from washing cars with tap water, for example, or running garden sprinklers on a daily basis. Tap water has so far been sourced from large rainwater tanks. However, rainfall is decreasing with climate change and the tanks soon run low. One solution is the Kurnell desalination plant. Since September 2009, this has supplied Sydneysiders with 250 million liters of water a day, making it the second largest such facility in the world. As a major sustainability feature, the plant runs on renewable energy. It also gives consideration to biodiversity: No less than a third of the Kurnell site is designated as a reserve for the indigenous frogs and bats.
Wastewater treatment
Since January 2008, HOCHTIEF Construction has been building a wastewater treatment plant for the Bulgarian city of Rousse, close to the Romanian border. It will treat waste water for a population of 240,000 from the beginning of 2010. The plant is based on a three-stage system comprising initial physical and then chemical and biological processes.
The consortium including Thiess which built the Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment Plant worked at record speed, completing Stage 1 in under ten months. This furnished Swanbank Power Station with a supply of treated water sooner than planned. The plant was further expanded in Stage 2, allowing it to treat water from the existing Oxley and Wacol wastewater treatment plants. The plant has the capacity to deliver up to 66 million liters of purified water a day. It is the first of three advanced water treatment plants and part of Australia’s largest water recycling scheme.
Groundwater remediation
HOCHTIEF Facility Management provides a cost-effective means of treating contaminated groundwater at Hamburg Airport: LoNiOt, a mobile in-situ ethanol dispensing system that purifies groundwater by using ethanol to stimulate bacteria into breaking down chlorinated hydrocarbons.
Dams
The Leighton Contractors team building Shannon Creek Dam in southwestern Australia had to comply with strict environmental stipulations imposed by the local administration. Specially designated exclusion zones minimized impacts on the sensitive surroundings. The project team also cleared as few trees as possible along access tracks and limited tree clearance on the land to be flooded. A site environmental officer watched that trees were felled to a