May 24, 2012 (TSR) – Azerbaijan, a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will activate a major seawater desalination plant on the coast of the Caspian Sea in 4 months, the country’s minister of ecology and natural resources Huseyn Bagirov told the Chinese media on Wednesday.
According to the minister, some 90 percent of the Plant’s equipment have been already delivered and installed. The facility will have a capacity of producing 230 litres of portable water per second. At the initial stage, it is expected to produce 1,000 cubic metres of fresh water per day.
Azerbaijan started desalination of the Caspian seawater earlier this month at one of the State Oil Company’s enterprises.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan may have made gains of late in giving its citizens reliable access to gas and electricity, but on one key front, potable water, the government is lagging. A large percentage of Azerbaijan’s 8.2 million citizens lacks easy access to qualified potable water.
Home to about one-third of Azerbaijan’s population, Baku relies on water from the Kura River and the Jeyranbatan Reservoir. But supplies are unable to keep up with the capital’s rapidly expanding number of residents.