Local Authority Engineering Award

Cork County Council recently won the ‘Local Authority Engineering Initiative Award’ at the Engineers Ireland Excellence Awards for its Clonakilty Wastewater Treatment Plant project. The awards featured projects from across the country that embodied the best in engineering creativity while also making significant contributions to local communities and the national economy.

The wastewater treatment plant in Clonakilty is the first plant constructed in Ireland and the UK using Nereda® technology and the first in the world that is built mostly underground to minimise the visual impact. This state of the art technology is set to displace the century-old activated sludge process that forms the basis for most modern wastewater treatment plants today.

Nereda® is an innovative, sustainable and cost-effective biological wastewater treatment technology that purifies water using the unique features of aerobic granular biomass. The success of Nereda® is its high water treatment capability in combination with significantly lower investment and operational costs, a very small physical footprint and high energy savings. Nereda® treats wastewater with aerobic granular biomass: purifying bacteria that create compact granules with superb settling properties.

The success of this project in Clonakilty presents an opportunity for Irish Water, Cork County Council and other local authorities to deliver further cost savings and environmental benefits across the water services sector in Ireland, through the roll out of such technology, particularly where faced with space constraints and strict environmental regulation.

EPS as the licensee for Nereda® in Ireland have a co-operation agreement with the global engineering consultancy, Royal Haskoning DHV for the delivery of Nereda in Ireland. To date, the EPS/Royal Haskoning DHV partnership has successfully delivered the wastewater treatment plant at Clonakilty and are currently completing plants in both Carrigtwohill and Lower Harbour.