metro

Panama Bay cleanup goes underground

The director of Idaan says tunnels will be used for some of the work, which will take 36 months.

GABRIEL RODRÍGUEZ/LA PRENSA

Bay of Panama965284

Businesses and merchants on Avenida Santa Elena in Parque Lefevre may rest assured that cleaning up the Bay of Panama does not mean their streets will be broken up.

As the director of the Instituto de Acueductos and Alcantarillados Nacionales (Idaan) Juan Antonio Ducruet, explained, the workers will use tunneling machines for their subterranean operations.

The clean up of the Bay will cost around $350 million and affect areas in Panama City, San Miguelito and Veracruz, which is part of Arraijan. The project should be finished in 36 months.

The work involves laying collection tubes for residual water in the Palomo River, Matías Hernández River and Río Abajo, among other tributaries and streams flowing in the capital and in San Miguelito.

The project also calls for building a water treatment plant on the Juan Díaz River, which used to receive only contaminated sewage. In the future, it will send purified water out to sea.

A methane storage plant will also be built to generate and distribute some of the electric energy to be used by a plant that collects residual water.

Although little work has been started on the project so far, Ducruet gave assurances that the majority of the pending projects will start up soon.

"This year we are going to start construction of the east interceptor tunnel, the collector on the Curundú River and, in conjunction with the Odebretch company, the construction of the collector on Avenida Balboa."

It takes around 18 months to build the collectors, 24 months for the treatment plants, and 36 months for the tunnel. The whole system should be operable in about 3 years.

Ducruet recognizes that, despite all the planning, there are some places such as secondary streets where walls and minor structures have been affected by the work. But repairing them is part of the project, he said. They have tried to to consult with local businesses owners to avoid inconveniencing them unnecessarily.