The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) awarded an award that highlights Public Companies of Medellin (EPM) among other companies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
EPM was recognized with the Ideas in Action award, as the most innovative water and sanitation company in the region, for the implementation of actions that allow access to water and sanitation for communities.
As explained by the company, the award-winning 'Closure of Gap' project seeks to improve the quality of life and the environment through the construction of unconventional sewers in hard-to-reach areas or settlements in municipalities in the Aburrá Valley.
With this award, announced by the IDB during the celebration of Water Day, EPM received a one-week mentoring workshop at the Basic Sanitation Company of the State of Sao Paulo -SABESP-, in Brazil, considered one of the largest companies in the world in terms of water and sanitation issues.
With this workshop, it is hoped that EPM will be able to learn about this innovation management model and its laboratory for these activities.
The prize awarded to the Colombian company also includes technical support “for the implementation of AquaRating's focused innovation analysis (international standard for evaluation), and for the development of an innovation plan designed for the specific case, with EPM needs and challenges”.
According to the award organizers, providing water, sanitation and solid waste management services in Latin America and the Caribbean is as important as it is challenging. They say that providing affordable and quality basic services to more than 220 million people in the region requires adopting new paradigms.
The project with which EPM won recognition from the IDB
'Closing the Gap' is a project that, according to EPM, seeks to satisfy the need for optimal sanitation services for those territories that have formed in the midst of unplanned and irregular growth of cities.
In the Aburrá Valley there are thousands of families living in informal settlements or areas that are difficult to manage, whose geographical conditions and the way in which they built their homes present limited space that, in many cases, makes it impossible to build conventional sewage systems.
Wastewater is discharged directly to the nearest water source, generating a negative impact on the environment and public health. In response to this situation, EPM adapted to the conditions of these territories, developing innovative models of unconventional sewerage, that is, networks exposed and supported on walls, pipes and structures that serve this purpose.
In this way, and with conventional and non-conventional systems, the company has managed to link more than 5,400 families, who already had the EPM aqueduct service, to the sanitation service, with an investment of $33 billion.
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