MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ambitious 1.000 km pipeline project to deliver water to desert dry north Chile

Former Public Works Minister Eduardo Bitran: “Water is the gold of the future”

A 3.85 billion US dollars pipeline to carry freshwater some 1,000 kilometres from central Chile to the country’s northern desert will provide a cheaper alternative for users now reliant on desalinization of ocean water, a business news Web site said this week.

The undersea AcquaAtacama pipeline is a project of French construction giant Vinci SA and non-profit Fundacion Chile, Portal Minero said in a story citing people involved in the initiative.

The conduit will be built in three phases and could be operating within five years, according to Marcela Angulo, Fundacion Chile’s director for Environment and Energy.

“Never in the history of the world and of Chile has water been so scarce, so transporting it is a good business,” former Public Works Minister Eduardo Bitran said. “Water is the gold of the future.”

The pipeline will be anchored to the ocean floor at a variable distance from Chile’s Pacific coast and is to be built using a proprietary technology – submariver – that provides greater resistance to rocks and to both internal and external pressure changes.

Vinci and Fundacion Chile have already contacted big industrial users of water, such as mining companies that are viewed as potential customers Portal Minero said.

Those firms currently use desalinated ocean water, but that process is very expensive due to the large quantities of energy required, Bitran pointed out.
Desalination costs one US dollar per cubic meter of water, compared with 49 cents per cubic meter of freshwater transported by pipeline, the former official said.

The erstwhile top researcher at Chile’s DGA water management agency, Pedro Rivera Izan, said the AcquaAtacama project also makes sense from an environmental viewpoint.

“To take a few cubic meters per second of water from the mouths of rivers in the southern zone is irrelevant, while to extract one cubic meter per second from a highland zone in the north can mean irreversible environmental damage”.