We must bear in mind that Empuriabrava
is built on very flat land, without any slopes
and that most homes used septic tanks for
drainage”.
In addition to the financial efforts of the
community to expand and upgrade the
sewer system, the Town Council also made
an investment effort and paid for the entire
cost of replacing the 1,865 street lamps, as
well as for asphalting more than 163,500
m2 of streets.
Implementation
of the vacuum sewer
network in Empuriabrava
FCC Aqualia has implemented a pioneering
vacuum sewer network in Empuriabrava.
The system does not need different levels
in order to be able to carry waste water and
its maintenance is extremely easy. Because
of the excellent results achieved, this tech-
nology could be extended to other munici-
palities with characteristics similar to those
of Empuriabrava or to zones with difficult
terrain, rural areas with buildings that are
very separated from each other, or areas for
protecting underground water, for example.
The sewer networks usually collect waste
water by means of a system of collectors
that function with gravity, a system that
requires that the collectors have a at least
some slope.
Due to the topographic conditions of this
urbanisation, the homes are situated bet-
ween 1 and 2 metres above sea level and
the terrain lacks the necessary slope. A
possible solution is to install several pumps,
but this implies a high cost of materials and
energy. In the case of Empuriabrava, the
waste water collection system that used
was septic tanks, with all the related envi-
ronmental and financial problems that this
entails.
In order to do away with these septic tanks,
it was decided to implement a vacuum,
sewer system, one of the first and one of
the longest in Spain after the project was
completed.
For complete information, check the article
in the magazine Tecnología del Agua.
Completion
of the project puts an
end to 40 years without
a sewerage system in
Empuriabrava
