Valley of Mexico's Sustainability Program: Implementing the Largest Agricultural Reuse Water Reclamation Project in History

A key component of the 2007 Valley of Mexico Sustainable Water Program is the reclamation of wastewater and storm water from the Mexico City metropolitan area for its reuse in agriculture. The Atotonilco water reclamation facility, with an average capacity of 35 m3/s, is the largest of four treatment/reclamation facilities contemplated in the program. The facility is located in the Municipality of Atotonilco el Alto, in the state of Hidalgo, north and outside of the Valley of Mexico. It will reclaim wastewater from close to 60% of the 20.1 million people presently living in the metropolitan area. Effluent from this plant will be used to irrigate close to 80,000 hectares in the Mezquital Valley of the Tula River, directly benefiting over 300,000 people directly involved in farming in this area. The expected wastewater volume reclaimed in a typical year will be just over 1 billion cubic meters, which makes it the largest water reclamation facility ever built in a single project in the world. This project is being implemented as a design-build-operate-partial finance scheme.