Water

The City of Albuquerque’s $375 million San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Project will begin delivering water in 2008. 

The project involved building a 600-foot diversion dam on the Rio Grande, pumping water to a treatment plant and then piping treated water to reservoirs around the city. By using river water from the San Juan-Chama Diversion Project, which began in 1963, the city can relieve its historic dependence on wells. The new project will provide 70 percent of the city’s future water supply.

A modern plant that treat water with a combination of gravity settling, chemical treatment, ozonation, and activated carbon filtration technologies. As a final step, water will be disinfected with sodium hypochlorite, and fluoride will be added for dental health.

For this project, Albuquerque won a World Leadership Award in late 2006 from the World Leadership Forum. The prestigious international prize recognizes cities that have shown exceptional imagination, foresight or resilience in dealing with major challenges.

See: http://www.sjcdrinkingwater.org/ .