2350'13"S | 6917'16"W

WHO WE ARE
WHAT WE DO
OUR PROJECTS

Escondida Water Supply, Chile

SCOPE OF WORK

VALUE

SCHEDULE

Engineering, procurement,

$3 billion

20132017

and construction

OUR INSIGHTS
OUR COMMITMENT

Delivering a reliable, sustainable

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water supply

Suppliers

The facilities that Bechtel is designing and building will desalinate seawater
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and pump it from the port of Coloso, Chile, to the world's largest copper
mine, high in the Andes. The new facility will be the second desalination
plant at Coloso and is meant to ensure a reliable, sustainable supply of
water for two copper concentrators at the Escondida mine. The
desalinated water is needed because groundwater is scarce in the arid
central Andes. Mining operations use large amounts of water to extract
copper from ore.

Ensuring a
reliable,
sustainable
supply of water
for the largest
copper mine
on earth.

INSIDE THE PROJECT

Amazing delivery

The desalination facility will be the largest

in the Americas and one of the largest in
the world.

The new plant will include an

offshore intake and outfall
system more than 65 feet (20
meters) below the surface of
the Pacific Ocean. The
system will bring seawater
into the desalination plant,
filter much of its dissolved
mineral and biological
content using a reverseosmosis process, and
circulate extracted brine and
other material back into the
ocean. The desalinated water
will be pumped to the mine.

How dry is it?

The Atacama Desert, a portion of which is home to the Escondida
complex, is the driest place on Earth.
Average annual rainfall in the Atacama totals some six-tenths of an
inch, or about 15 millimeters. Some locations, including Iquique, to
which Bechtel is no stranger, receive much less moistureon the
order of 80 percent less.
In some parts of the Atacamawhich extends in a relatively narrow
band, north to south, from southernmost Peru into northern
Chilehumans have never recorded any precipitation. And yet more
than a million people call it home.

The Escondida Water Suppy

project team will construct a
new seawater desalination
plant, which will be linked to
the Escondida mine site in
the Andes by two 112-mile
(180-kilometer), 42-inch(107-centimeter-) diameter
lined pipelines.
Four high-pressure pumping
stations will move water east
from the port across the
Atacama Desert and up to a
reservoir at the mine, 10,500
feet (3,200 meters) above
sea level.
In addition, we will deliver 75
miles (120 kilometers) of new
220-kilovolt transmission line,
build three new substations,
and expand four existing
substations to power the
system.