AEGEA’s sewer network expansion restores Araruama Lagoon

AEGEA holds 23.6 percent of Brazil’s private sanitation market and now serves 5 million people in 48 municipalities, up from seven municipalities in only seven years. The company has leveraged its growth by forming strategic partnerships with private investors such as Equipav, S.A., GIC Private Limited, and International Finance Corporation with World Bank Group (IFC). These partners help...

OpenFlows SewerGEMS modeling software from Bentley Systems allowed AEGEA to build a hydrau-lic model that integrated data from existing geographic information system (GIS), computer-aided design (CAD), and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). This created a wastewater management network showing an overview of the entire concession area and provided multiple data streams for real-time,...

AEGEA ran more than 80 what-if scenarios and analyzed more than 2,500 kilometers (km) of sewer and drainage networks in their model. These scenarios ultimately led to the development of nine final scenarios incorporating 900 km of combined sewer and drainage networks, plus 63 lift stations, and seven treatment plants. Each scenario featured different expansion plans over time, with interventions...

Developing the master plan using SewerGEMS accelerated the approval process by demonstrating the plan’s return on investment. AEGEA drew a triple bottom line – economic, social, and environmental – for measuring the value of the proposed interventions. The master plan addressed the concerns of key stakeholders, including customers, civic groups, government agencies,...

As of the end of 2017, Prolagos had invested more than $134 million to improve access to clean water, increasing sewage collection to 76 percent. Illegal discharges have dropped to zero. The Araruama Lagoon has been restored, with an organic load removal rate of 10 tons per day and biological oxygen demand reduction from 25 to 5 milligrams per liter. Fishermen report 39 species of fish and shrimp...

Angela Suarez is a product success consultant for the Water Infrastructure team at Bentley Systems, a United States software development company. She has been in the infrastructure industry for 17 years and has spent most of her career focused on hydraulic and hydrology modeling.