Bids will be invited during 1998 by the State Hydraulic Works (DSI) for the estimated $1,200 million first stage of the Greater Melen river water supply project for Istanbul, DSI sources say. However, the project is running about six months behind schedule in meeting the original target for completion in 2001, the sources add (Water, MEED Special Report, 26:1:96).

Prequalification applications will probably be invited in December for the first stage of the project, the sources say. This is a turnkey design and build contract for the Cumhuriyet water treatment plant with a daily capacity of 800,000 cubic metres, to be sited to the north of the existing Omerli Dam reservoir, east of Istanbul. The mechanical plant will be the largest in Turkey on its completion.

The 10 further component packages of the project will be tendered afterwards throughout 1998, the sources say. They include a weir on the Greater Melen river, pumping stations, a 150-kilometre transmission pipeline in three sections of steel pipes, a transit dam at Alacali, and electricity transmission lines.

Bids are expected to be invited in December 1999 for one of the most ambitious elements of the scheme, a tunnel at a depth of about 200 metres under the surface of the Bosporus waterway in Istanbul.

Japan's Overseas Economic Co-operation Fund is part-financing the project, for which the overall consultants are Japan's Nippon Koei with Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners and Mott MacDonald, both of the UK.

DSI also soon expects to sign a contract valued at about $12 million with a venture of Turkish contractor Limak and Zurich-based ABB Asea Brown Boveri for the construction of pumping stations at Kurfalli as part of another Istanbul water supply scheme, the Yesilcay project, the sources say.