St Petersburg South West Wastewater Treatment Plant

The NDEP has been part of a concerted international effort to improve the environmental situation in the Gulf of Finland by investing in the completion of the South West Wastewater Treatment Plant (SWWWTP). This has been categorised as one of the highest priority projects in the region as in recent years about 1,220,000 m³per day of untreated waste water has been discharged directly into the sea.

Construction originally started in 1987 but works were suspended and did not recommence until beginning of the 1990s, only to be discontinued very soon thereafter due to financial difficulties, by which time approximately 40-45 per cent of the facility had been completed. In order to promote the completion of the SWWWTP, as well as other environmental projects, NIB and NEFCO, together with the Finnish Ministry of Environment and SIDA established, based on a special study, the Nordic Initiative. The SWWWTP was put on the priority-list of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership and construction of the plant resumed in December 2002. The project was succesfully completed on September 22nd, 2005. The SWWWTP was the first project to be completed within the framework of NDEP and with this patronage of goodwill and transparency managed to attract over 50 million in donor funding from Finland, Sweden, the European Commission and NDEP.

THE SWWWTP was the first major Public Private Partnership project carried out in Russia. It combined the resources and expertise of of the local authorities with those of Nordvod, a private company charged with project implementation and owned by a Nordic construction consortium consisting of the NCC International AB, Skanska BOT AB, YIT COnstruction Ltd, NEFCO and SUE Vodokanal St Petersburg local water utility company.

In addition to the construction of the wastewater treatment plant, the project included two independent components: the Sludge Incineration Plant, funded by the European Commission and the EIB, and associated civil works in the plant area, financed by Vodokanal and the City of St Petersburg.

SWWWTP presented a unique case for unprecedented international cooperation and client dedication that delivered great results for the local population and the environment of the Baltic Sea. The plant now complies with HELCOM standards and treats 330,000 cubic meters of wastewater, which was previously discharged untreated into the River Neva, per day and removes 90 per cent of phosphorus and 70-80 per cent of nitrogen from the wastewater load. The city's capacity for treating wastewater has increased to 85 per cent.

The project has won international awards such as the Swedish Baltic Sea Award in 2005, EU European Business Award for Environment in 2006 and the Russian Federation Quality Prize in 2006.