The restoration of biological wastewater treatment facilities—sludge fields—is under way in the capital of Tatarstan. The work is being carried out under a federal project aimed at improving the condition of the Volga River and included in the national project “Ecology”. Reclamation is 61% complete and will be completed in 2024.
In 2021, targets were set for the dewatering, disinfection, neutralisation and processing of sludge, as well as for eliminating the harmful odour about which local residents had complained.
This pilot project is notable for its scale in Russia: it was planned to remove sludge from an area of 140 hectares and process 4 million cubic metres of sludge using the geotubing method.
The activities planned for the current year, 2023, include extracting and processing the remaining sludge at nine specialised sites, as well as transferring the sludge to geotubes using a special prefabricated polyethylene pipeline with a flanged connection.
Next year, work is planned to continue on preparing the area for subsequent seeding, installing a lower anti-filtration geosynthetic screen made of "TechPolymer", laying a crushed-stone bedding layer and pumping the sludge into geotubes.
