Águas de Paços de Ferreira today launched the public tender for the remodeling and expansion of the Arreigada Wastewater Treatment Plant (ETAR), in a 21.6 million euro investment, aimed at solving an environmental problem that has persisted for two decades.
According to the notice opening the procedure published today in the Official Gazette, the contract has a base price of 21,678,481.11 euros and provides for a construction deadline of 910 days (about two and a half years).
The intervention aims to modernize and increase the capacity of the infrastructure located in the municipality of Paços de Ferreira, in the Porto district.
The investment had already been announced in February 2024 by the then president of that municipality, Humberto Brito, who at the time, in a press conference, highlighted that this project — whose execution was prioritized by the Government in the Council of Ministers — will equip the municipality with a new ETAR to be built on land adjacent to the current installation, in the Arreigada locality, near the Ferreira River.
At the same occasion, the mayor recalled that the renovation of the current treatment plant, completed in 2020 at a cost of 5.1 million euros, did not meet the needs, which forced the municipality to consider building a brand-new ETAR, following a model different from that adopted when the original station was remodelled in 1993.
While construction is underway, the current ETAR will continue to operate in coordination with the new system.
Since October 2022 that facility has been operating with a biological treatment module, which allows an installed capacity of 10,000 cubic meters and ensures compliance with the requirements of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA).
The municipality is also pursuing a legal action against the designer, the contractor and the supplier of the technology used in the previous renovation, in order to determine responsibility for the solution that did not meet expectations.
This intervention in the infrastructure has been considered a priority by local and environmental authorities to resolve chronic pollution problems in the Ferreira River.
In recent years, this issue has prompted various protests by local residents and environmental movements, as well as interventions by the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), which in 2023 admitted that the Arreigada ETAR did not comply with the discharge standards established by current legislation.
