Between January 2017 and February 2018 I was EIA Project Manager on the $10.2 million water supply reconstruction at Mestia, capital of Svaneti at 1,400 m in the Georgian Caucasus. The contract was ENAA form, financed by the Asian Development Bank under Loan 3078-GEO, with Ludwig Pfeiffer of Germany as contractor and Protecno of Italy on process technology. My scope was the electrical, instrumentation and automation delivery across the whole scheme.
The system has three parts. A modular treatment plant at the Zargashi site, roughly 1,500 m up, taking 40 l/s of glacial meltwater through ultrafiltration and UV disinfection. Then 9.2 km of DN200-400 transmission main climbing 1,200 vertical metres. At the end of it, three rehabilitated reservoirs holding 4,000 m3 that work as gravity-fed storage for the town.
The process was never the hard part. Altitude and logistics were. One mountain road serves Mestia and winter closes it regularly, so every module, cable drum and filter skid came up the Enguri gorge exposed to rockfall and snow. The source water made it harder: glacial milk carries fine suspended sediment that blinds a conventional filtration train within days. That is why the plant runs ultrafiltration membranes rather than media filters - they hold their performance through the turbidity spikes that would defeat sand.
The transmission line had its own constraint. Twelve hundred vertical metres of terrain that freezes hard for months, where any exposed section is a guaranteed winter burst. Burial depths and insulation were set for Caucasus winters rather than textbook averages, across the full 9.2 km.
Mestia is also a UNESCO site, and that shaped the design more than any specification did. The 12th-century Tsrniashi spring catchments were restored and brought into the new scheme rather than replaced, and the medieval tower districts could not simply be trenched through. The restored catchments now feed the Lanchvali reservoirs, which behave as mountain water batteries - buffering demand and holding pressure across the town's vertical zones without constant pumping.
On the delivery side, the modular concept was the decision that made the programme possible. Factory-built treatment blocks were assembled at altitude instead of constructed there, which cut site exposure sharply. Commissioning was then sequenced around the winter access windows, so energisation, loop checks and testing all fell inside the months when the road could be relied on. Membrane and UV performance was proven on live glacial water at the design flow of 40 l/s, and network pressures were balanced across the town before handover.
The plant was handed over in February 2018, thirteen months from mobilisation, with every watchtower district connected to treated water. The number that matters came later: by 2022, health data recorded an 82 percent drop in gastrointestinal disease in the town. WTP Mestia and WWTP Anaklia were delivered as one package, executed in parallel, which is why the two projects share a timeline.
WTP Mestia, Georgia - Project Summary and Related Work
PROJECT SUMMARY