Ilham Aliyev attended a ceremony marking the supply of drinking water to the city of Shirvan from the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended a ceremony marking the supply of drinking water to the city of Shirvan from the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system.

The President reviewed the stands describing the technical parameters of the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system and the master plan of Shirvan water supply system.

The chairman of the "AzerSu" Open Joint-Stock Company, Gorkhmaz Huseynov, informed President Ilham Aliyev that drinking water is supplied to Shirvan from a water treatment plant built in 1952. The service life of this system has long expired. A part of the city population is provided with partially treated water from the Kura River in a 12-hour mode. The capacity of the existing water treatment plant is insufficient for the water supply of a new residential area. To meet the growing demand, the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system has been selected as a new source. According to official statistics, the current population of Shirvan is 79,000 people and about 50 per cent of them are supplied with water through a centralized water supply network. The rest of the population meets their needs on an individual basis.

The length of the centralized water supply system of the city of Shirvan is 66 km and of the sewage network only 22 km.

The city has no facilities for the treatment of waste water, which flows into the Main Shirvan collector untreated.

The President was informed about the new project.

It was noted that the commissioning of the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system will resolve the problem of water supply of a new housing estate in the city of Shirvan which has been experiencing difficulties due to a lack of drinking water. In order to provide the new residential community with uninterrupted drinking water, the main line has been built and the construction of an internal network started. The construction of the main line stretching over 2 kilometers and a 35-kilometer section of the network with a total length of 60 kilometers was completed a short time. As a result, more than 15,000 people are supplied with water through the Shirvan-Mugan clustered pipeline on a round-the-clock basis.

After the completion of the internal network, the number of those using the benefits of centralized water supply will reach 35,000 people. According to the project, residents of the new housing estate will also be provided with smart meters in advance.

It was noted that a tentative project on the reconstruction of the water supply and sewage systems of the city of Shirvan has also been prepared. There are plans to implement the project in accordance with the "Water supply and sanitation in small towns" project co-funded by the Government of Azerbaijan and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency. The supply of the Absheron Peninsula with an additional 5 cubic meters of drinking water per second through the Oguz-Gabala-Baku line and the commissioning of the Jeyranbatan ultrafiltration water treatment plant with a capacity of 6 cubic meters per second, the foundation of which was laid in a ceremony attended by President Ilham Aliyev on 8 September 2011 will provide the Absheron Peninsula with sufficient supplies of drinking water. This will make it possible to use the capacity of the Kura water system to provide the population of towns and villages along the Kura with clean and quality water.

President Ilham Aliyev was informed about the work carried out within the framework of the Shirvan-Mugan clustered water supply system, whose construction is still ongoing.

After reviewing the stands, the head of state commissioned the installation that supplies drinking water to the city of Shirvan from the Shirvan-Mugan clustered pipeline, the foundation of which was laid on 16 July 2012.

Then, President Ilham Aliyev met with builders of the pipeline and the municipal water supply network, and gave relevant instructions and recommendations.