The drinking water supply and waste-water collection and treatment systems are being modernised on the island of Krk in the region of Adriatic Croatia. These upgrades have been made possible thanks to financial support from the EU.
- 20 December 2017
The project is overseeing improvements to 38.7 km of Krk’s drinking-water supply network. As regards its waste-water collection and treatment systems, gravity sewers – which use energy produced by a difference in elevation to move water – 79.56 km in length, and pressure sewers – which use pumps for the same purpose, 6.35 km in length, are being installed.
Repairs will be carried out on around 3 km of the sewer network, and coastal water collectors will be renovated, while a total of 26 new pumping stations are under construction.
New waste-water treatment plants
In addition, the island is to get six new waste-water treatment plants. Besides serving the city of Krk, the island’s largest settlement with some 6000 inhabitants, one plant will be located in each of the towns of Baška, Klimno-Šilo, Malinska-Njivice, Omišalj and Punat.
The project is financing the purchase of a range of different equipment. The items include sludge transporters, closed-circuit television for inspection of sewers, and geographic information systems to capture, store, analyse and present data to improve management of the water-supply and waste-water system assets. Small pumping units and water meters to measure consumption will also be acquired.
Funding for the upgrades totals more than EUR 85 million – of this, approximately EUR 48.5 million comes from the EU’s Cohesion Fund.
As a result of the work, the entire population in the area covered by the project will be connected to both the drinking-water supply network and the waste-water collection and treatment network. Thus, inhabitants will have continuous access to safe and clean drinking water, while the risk of uncontrolled discharge of untreated waste water will be minimised. Consequently, public health and environmental pollution risks will be significantly reduced.
The population of Krk is close to 20 000, but the impact of the project is multiplied by the island’s importance as a tourist destination. The number of annual overnight tourist stays on Krk is in the region of 5 million.
As well as being the most populous island in the Adriatic Sea, Krk is also the joint largest, with an area of 405 78 square kilometres, exactly the same as the neighbouring island of Cres, which is also part of Croatia.
Krk is connected to the Croatian mainland by the Krk bridge, a 1430-metre-long reinforced concrete arch bridge which opened in 1980. Once over the bridge it is only a short distance to Rijeka, Croatia’s third-largest city with around 130 000 inhabitants and seat of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, within which Krk is also located.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Collection of waste water and waste water treatment on the island of Krk” is EUR 85 304 258, with the EU’s Cohesion Fund contributing EUR 48 570 876 through the “Competitiveness and Cohesion” Operational Programme for the 2014-2020 programming period.