Integrated Urban Wastewater System Data Network - Data network system: Diagnostic Report Cali, Colombia

Integrated Urban Wastewater System Data Network - Data network system: Diagnostic Report Cali, Colombia

Unesco-IHE

Unesco-IHE

2008-02-28

The pressure on the Urban Wastewater Systems (UWwS) increases as urbanization continues relentlessly and climate change appears to lead to more extreme rainfall events. These pressures have a negative effect on the efficiency of UWwS to reduce the urban pollution reaching water-receiving systems. One of the main causes of the problem is that the UWwSs have been traditionally designed for static/stationary loading but are operating under dynamic loading. Hence, only in the rare case of the design loading the system operates optimally. Thus, there is a lack of control in all other operational situations. The built-in capacity of the system is not used, or it is used in a way that the objectives cannot be met. In the first situation, invested capital is not productive; in the second situation, damage occurs: receiving waters are polluted or the city is flooded. Thus, the urban pollution managers are being forced to optimize the control of UWwS in order to deal with extreme variations in terms of flow and water quality and new criteria for pollution control performance. The same situation appears in the city of Cali, Colombia. EMCALI suspends the intake of raw water, due to the contamination of the water supply sources by wastewater discharges upstream form intake water, especially from South Channel and other discharges. Consequently, the drinking water plants present higher operation and treatment requirements and as a consequence an increment in the treatment costs. One of the main causes of the deficient control of the UWwS is the lack of data in each subsystem and the lack of coordination within institutions to share the information and take decisions based on it. This document presents a diagnostic report for urban wastewater monitoring systems of Cali. It includes an inventory of their components: Drainage Network, Cañaveralejo wastewater treatment plant and water receiving system (Cauca River) and identify the current status of the monitoring system. The main findings are that in the Cauca river there is a network of stations for water levels and water quality parameters but the information is not share successfully within the institutions IDEAM, CVC, DAGMA, EMCALI and hardly is used for system control purposes. The information from the sewer system is scarce and mainly at the entrance of the WwTP or in the pumping stations. The majority of information is collected in the Canaveralejo WwTP.

urban wastewater systems
water-receiving systems
climate change
Delft Cluster
CT06.24.11

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cc200a16-f3a2-4cac-8236-95aa7fbeac0e

Delft Cluser

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report

(c) 2008 Unesco-IHE