The plant is seen as the first stage in the plan to restore the heavily polluted Santiago River back to health. The plant, situated to the north of the city on the highway to Saltillo, will return most of its treated water – 6,500 liters per second, for now – to the river.
Finished only a few months behind schedule, Agua Prieta will eventually treat 8,500 liters of sewage per second. It will serve the Atemajac watershed, whose population of three million creates up to 80 percent of metro area Guadalajara’s total water waste.
Peña Nieto said the plant was an “expression of how the country was changing,” and insisted that Mexicans are set to reap the benefits of “other structural changes” looming on the horizon.
Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval said with the completion of the plant his administration “has fulfilled an historic responsibility.” Political frictions had put the urgent project on hold through several previous state administrations.
The plant was built at a cost of more than three billion pesos (230 million dollars), about 20 percent higher than its original budget. It uses biogas to produce 100 percent of its power requirements.