Discussions with mayor of Zorita de los Canes for replication
Today the Volterra team visited the beautiful village of Zorita de los Canes (Guadalajara) to discuss a new replication project. The village has an old waste water treatment facility that is often overflowing (particularly in summer when the area receives 700 additional visitors to swim in the Tajo river) and a natural solution could give multiple benefits.
Zorita counts with a former trout farming installation which is about to be decommissioned. Together with mayor José Andrés Nadador, we discussed how this infrastructure can be turned into a multi-use basin for our green floating filters to not only filter the village's waste water but also bring biodiversity and green infrastructure to the area. The realisation would give a perfect example of circular economy practices.
We will keep you posted about progress the coming months as the example is very relevant. Hundreds of villages and villages border the heavily polluted Tajo river. Downstream all this pollution generates in another problem, the uncontrollable growth of aquatic plants (in this case Azolla filiculoides) a "carpet" that is 90 km long and that already occupies 12.000 ha of waterbodies, literally blocks the river, is detrimental to other biodiversity particulary water birds, and creates a huge waste problem. Cost-effective nature based waste water treatment facilities upstream can make a huge difference if implemented on a massive scale. This way the yearly recurring fines from the EU can also be prevented. All in all an interesting approach to add value & circularity to waste water.
