Madrid, September 27, 2005.- Befesa Medio Ambiente, Abengoa’s Environmental Services Company, has been awarded the contracts to execute to lixiviate treatment plants - wastewater management plants in Asturias and Palencia. The contract value is two million euro.

The plant in Palencia will be built for the province’s Urban Waste Treatment Center. It will treat 10,000 cubic meters per day of a high polluting load lixiviate. The process to be employed will be pre-treatment in which lixiviate will pass through a series of filters with different-size pores. The treatment will be completed with a double-stage reverse osmosis process. This process extracts the lixiviate from the initial waste, and up to 80 percent clean water is obtained and returned to the city's channels, guaranteeing maximum quality and reducing contamination. The plant will operate non-stop for more than 8,000 hours a year.

In Asturias, improvement works will be carried out at the treatment plant for lixiviates from the controlled non-hazardous waste deposit belonging to the Solid Waste Management Consortium of Asturias (Cogersa), through the introduction of complementary treatment processes that reduce the contamination level of the waters so that they may be sent to the urban waste collector to be built in Tabaza. With these new processes which include a physicochemical unit with active carbon filters and a centrifuge dehydration unit, the treatment of more than 250,000 cubic meters per year of lixiviate from the urban waste deposit of the Principality’s 78 municipal districts will be possible. This is a very considerable amount when one considers that the product is very difficult to treat and is also highly toxic.

According to Befesa’s Chairman, Javier Molina “these contracts clearly demonstrate Befesa’s commitment to the environment, as well as its capacity and transparency in waste management. Befesa employs a complex and sophisticated technology and is the leading wastewater treatment and management company in Spain utilizing biological and membrane systems. Among other projects, Befesa has managed Lixiviate Plants in Madrid, Barcelona, Avila and Malaga, utilizing the sector's leading-edge in-house technology”.

Befesa, Abengoa’s Environmental Services subsidiary, focuses its activity on providing environmental services for the industrial sector and the construction of environmental infrastructures. It is a listed company that closed 2004 with treasury stock in excess of 393 million euro. In 2004, Befesa managed a total of 1,374,000 tons of industrial wastes, a twelve per cent increase on the previous year. (www.befesa.es).

Abengoa, a listed industrial and technology company with treasury stock in excess of 1,200 million euro, provides solutions for Sustainable Development, the Information and Knowledge Society, and the Creation of Infrastructures. It currently operates in four large sectors; Bioethanol, in which it is the world’s number two bioethanol producer; Environmental Services, in which it is European leader in segments of the industrial waste market; Information Technologies, in which it is one of the main role players at international level with operations in Europe, the Americas, and Asia; and Industrial Engineering and Construction, in which it is leader in Spain and Latin America (www.abengoa.com)