Local services
The new pump at the HTVR pumping station has been started up. Mayor of Debrecen László Papp and Deputy Mayor of Debrecen Ákos Balázs held a press conference on the commissioning of the unit on the 29th of September, 2023.
“We have reached another major milestone in implementing the first phase of the Civaqua programme, which is 97 percent complete. As promised, the first phase will be handed over at the end of this year, and the moment will come when the water from the Eastern Main Canal will meet the Tócó headwaters, a moment that has been in the waiting for decades, ever since the early 1970s, thanks to Civaqua,” László Papp said.
“We were already in this hall in April, but we had yet to see this huge pump installed at that time, which is an amazing achievement. It’s a pump with a 1500 KW motor that can move 1275 litres of water per second,” he added adding that the performance of the pump is shown by the fact that from this point, it has to be pumped to a point 65 metres higher than the pipeline, which would pump the water up to a height of 85-90 metres due to the loss of length of the pipeline.
He added that the device would fill a 3000 cubic metre reservoir in 20 minutes. He pointed out that 13 km of pressure pipeline had already been installed, and 2 km of gravity pipeline were already in place.
A few days ago, he recalled, they had also visited Józsa, where they had seen in the centre the improvements that are no longer part of this project but are being carried out under a municipal order, which can now also provide for welfare improvements.
One of the most important elements of Civaqua, apart from the fact that it will bring water into the city’s surface water system, is that we will try to complement these opportunities with various welfare programmes, and we would like to implement welfare developments in the area of the Vezér Road reservoir in the coming years, which will be attractive for the people living in the area and for Debrecen as a whole, he said. He stressed that the pump is in test operation, the construction is not yet completed, and the experts are still testing, specialising and perfecting the system, which will be put into operation towards the end of the year.
Ákos Balázs said that they had to use very serious technical solutions to get the water to Debrecen. At the same time, it was thanks to this water that the protective afforestation was carried out along the Tócó stream, refortifing the Tócó stream, which is being thought of as a green corridor: “In recent years, we have started to refortify both Józsa and Vezér streets, and this water will also feed these water reservoirs.
“The revitalisation programmes around the creek bed are also all aimed at enhancing biodiversity and improving the climatic conditions of the water, together with the plants, and thus we will be able to improve the air quality of Debrecen a lot,” the deputy mayor said. He added that the green measures that are being taken are mutually reinforcing, but the flagship is the Civaqua programme, which will make a 50-year-old dream come true.
Source and photo credit: debrecen.hu
