Kawai Water Purification Plant in Yokohama
is the first water purification plant that introduced PFI. Constructed in 1901,
it is the oldest of the four water purification plants in Yokohama. The local
government of Yokohama felt the necessity to renew the whole facilities because
its aseismic capacity decreased considerably. It planned to introduce the
membrane filtration system, but it had no delivery record of this system. It
decided to introduce PFI for the renewal of the facilities to utilize the management
capability and technology of a private company.
In the renewal project, the local
government concluded a contract that the private company builds facilities
including purification facilities and transfers the ownership to the local
government and that the private company maintains the facilities and takes care
of the sludge for its effective utilization for the next 20 years. This is a
full package contract based on the Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) system. In this
case, the point is that which party, the local government or the private
company, should bear the responsibility if water quality is impaired. In this
project, the local government governs the entrance and exit of water, while the
private company secures daily water production of about 170,000 tons after it
receives raw water of turbidity of less than 30 degrees and maintains the water
quality required by the local government.
The PFI helped the local government reduced
the project cost including expenses for maintenance to 27,7 billion yen, about
6% lower than the cost that could have been required by the conventional method.
In addition, under the direction of the private company, the water purification
plant did not run pumps using the difference in height between the water source
and the purification plant, and operated the facilities using the power by photovoltaic
generation inside the premises. At present, this water purification plant
attracts attention as a successful case of PFI. (To be continued)
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