ANCIENT CITY BUILDS FUTURE-PROOF NEW WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM A new and truly unique water supply system has been developed for the beautiful, historic Italian city of Como. Built in an artificial cavern blasted into the surrounding mountains, it supplies twice as much water as the old system it replaces and will help the city evolve and develop for decades to come.
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ike many established cities, Como is adapting as the local and world economies change. Once small and selfcontained, it was a centre for manufacturing and textile industries. Now the manufacturing tends to be small scale and high value, service industries are taking root and more and more people are choosing to live there and commute to work in larger metropolitan areas. It has always attracted visitors, and today its tourist industry is booming. Lake Como is the natural water source for the city and now local engineers from ACSM SpA have excelled in building a new purification and supply system that is both futuristic 14 Industry Europe
and future-proof. Serving a population of 85,000, water supply is a complex task, hence the sophisticated Movicon Scada Platform control system that is used. Located in the foothills of the Alps, there were no places suitable and large enough in Como to build the new plant, but this was turned into a positive. One of the fundamental design criteria was to develop a highly secure facility that would not be susceptible to terrorist attack, vandalism or the ravages of the sometimes extreme winter weather. The answer was to build underground, so the first part of the project was excavating 35,000 cubic metres of rock to form the tunnels and caverns for the
treatment plant and supply pipelines. A new reservoir was also constructed, based on a disused air raid shelter. The purifying plant produces clean drinking water, 24 hours a day seven days a week, and pumps it into the main network in the Como Aqueduct. This feeds three giant storage tanks supplying the east, central and west districts of the city. The enormous amount of water is lifted by a bank of 1000kW pumps. Normally these are powered from the local mains grid, but a group of emergency 1200kW electric generators have also been installed in the plant. This entire system is run completely automatically
