After several years of twists and turns, breaks and repairs, finally the Province will once again invest a million-dollar sum to definitively finish the North Aqueduct, a key work to supply drinking water to residents of Tolosa, Gonnet, Villa Castells and City Bell, among other towns in the north of La Plata. With a budget of 1,379,392,301 million pesosthe works are expected to be carried out in a period of 300 calendar days and will benefit, as anticipated, thousands of residents in La Plata.
The Buenos Aires authorities indicated that the opening of the bidding envelopes will take place on July 1 and, once awarded, the works will extend from the pumping station at 120 and 33, in Tolosa, to the junction 489 and 15 bis, in Gonnet, and represents more than 8,500 meters of new pipes.
Within this framework, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights of the Province, July Winethanked the governor Axel Kicillof “the next tender for the rehabilitation of the North Aqueduct that will benefit Tolosa, Gonnet and Villa Castells” and highlighted “the promotion of the hierarchy of the Capital City, which in this case is carried out, together with the Minister of Infrastructure, Leonardo Nardinito improve the drinking water service of thousands of residents of those towns”.
I congratulate and thank the Governor @Kicillofok and to the minister @Nardini_Leofor the bidding process with provincial funds for the rehabilitation of the northern aqueduct in the towns of Tolosa, Gonnet and Villa Castells, which will improve the quality of life of thousands of people from La Plata.
— Julio Alak (@Julio_Alak) May 15, 2023
The tender that will be held on June 1, has a budget of $1,379,392,301, will be developed within a period of 300 calendar days and will extend from 120 and 33 to the junction located at 489 and 15 bis, and represents the repair of 8561 meters of pipes.
— Julio Alak (@Julio_Alak) May 15, 2023
This will make it possible to regulate the pressure throughout the trace and minimize cuts due to breakage. It will benefit the northern area of the city, since it will allow the supply of drinking water to the urban developments bordering the Buenos Aires-La Plata highway.#RightToTheFuture
— Julio Alak (@Julio_Alak) May 15, 2023
The actions will allow regulating the pressure in the entire trace, being able to operate in a more efficient way, minimizing cuts due to breakage. In addition, the northern area of the city of La Plata will benefit, since it will allow the supply of drinking water to the urban developments bordering the La Plata-Buenos Aires highway.
FAILED WORK
Although the works began in 2017 and took place over several years, the aqueduct never worked as it should. The works proved time and again to have serious shortcomings, generating huge water losses every time Aguas Bonaerense SA (ABSA) decided to increase the supply flow.
“The Northern Aqueduct, which was supposed to supply drinking water to Gonnet, was delayed by two years in the deadline given by Julio Garro and was never officially inaugurated. And the worst thing is that when it was put under pressure, it couldn’t stand and it has been breaking in the last two years, in more than 100 places.”the neighbors were already remarking at the beginning of 2020 about the multiple damages that the work had presented, which was never formally inaugurated.
With the change of management, the new authorities of the company in charge of the service carried out a thorough audit and detected serious irregularities in the works. The conduit, proposed by the management of Mary Eugenia Vidal to mitigate the inconveniences in those areas of the provincial capital, it could never be operated for this purpose, generating a constant investment in irrelevant repairs that forced its operation to be reduced.
The work of the North Aqueduct was in charge of the transitory business unit (UTE) constituted by Coninsa SA y Mario Caroleo SA, but it never passed the hydraulic test that allowed its final operation. Despite this, the previous management at the head of ABSA “complied with the payments for a useless work” for a total of 83 million pesos, as revealed by the management in charge of German Ciucciwho assumed command of the company after the assumption of Axel Kicillof.
The internal investigation carried out by the new authorities detected non-compliance in different instances of the work that prevented the company providing water and sewage services in the region from definitively taking over the operation of the Aqueduct. The problems were various, but the main irregularities occurred in the construction process: during the construction period, the company omitted necessary steps for the correct operation of the pipeline in order to provide the drinking water service. As reported, These omissions ranged from failures in the connection of the pipes, to the non-existence in the preparation of the soil for leveling them, preventing the aqueduct from tolerating the necessary pressure to carry drinking water to the almost 30,000 users who were promised the service.
The report made by the company details that ABSA personnel who intervened in the repairs detected that in the excavations carried out at the time of the breaks, unselected soil, homogeneous in the trench, without stratification or evidence of turnover, and the pipes not resting on sand. This situation generates constant breaks in different sectors of the trace that imply the permanent exit from operation, apart from a constant expenditure in repairs that amounts to more than 55 million pesos.
In the hard report made by the company, the initiation of investigations had also been advanced, which did not rule out internal complicity that would allow the construction process to advance, an evident situation given the passivity of the inspection bodies, since progress was allowed without the executive engineering and hydraulic tests were requested but not required with extreme measures. Only at the end, an adequate analysis was carried out, when the work was already 97% advanced, when errors were detected at the time of commissioning.
