Unpleasant smell at Chisinau wastewater treatment station could disappear by next summer

The unpleasant smell at the Chisinau wastewater treatment station could disappear until next summer as the preliminary results of the Moldovan-Dutch mud drying project are rather encouraging, the director of Apa-Canal Chisinau (ACC) Constantin Becciev said Monday at the Chisinau City Hall's meeting. The daily volume of mud at the Chisinau wastewater treatment station is fully pumped into special sacks called geotubes starting with September 18. The mud in geotubes is dried much quicker. As many as 1,600 cubic meters of mud are collected daily in Chisinau and stored in geotubes. This is second stage of the mud dehydration project implemented by SA “Apa-Canal Chisinau” (ACC) in partnership with Duch colleagues, Constantin Becciev said. He said that in geotubes the residues are eliminated with the help of reagents and the mud is accumulated in them without being subjected to drying on the mud platforms that are over 30 years old. To prove this, he put a bottle where the mud was separated from water on the mayor's table. At the first stage of the project, the mud was dried with the help of reagents up to a humidity degree of 76%, which on the mud platforms is obtained uring a year. Constantin Becciev said that Apa-Canal Chisinau plans to increase the volume of mud stored in geotubes until May next year. The other part of the mud will be spread on fields as natural fertilizer. This way, the unpleasant smell at the Chisinau wastewater treatment station could disappear by next summer. Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said that video cameras have been installed at the station so that the Chisinau residents will be able to follow live all the process. “We can solve many old municipal problems by implementing new technology,” he said. A geotube can be up to 180 meters long and can accommodate up to 15,000 cubic meters of mud.