Europe has adopted new rules for urban wastewater treatment. What will they mean for our wallets, health and environment?
For professionalsObligations, deadlines and working materialsModern treatment plants will newly capture up to 80% of micropollutants – trace amounts of contraceptives, antidepressants or ibuprofen. These substances will no longer circulate through nature and threaten aquatic life, sources of drinking water or bathing waters.
Stricter phosphorus limits will make swimming in rivers and ponds downstream from cities safer and reduce the risk of algal blooms and skin problems.
Anonymous, objective wastewater analysis can provide several days of warning of approaching waves of disease and reveal the silent spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a region. This gives people and doctors more time to protect health and act before waiting rooms fill up.
The Directive encourages cities to manage rainwater better. Instead of running unused into sewers and flooding basements during storms, it can be retained in parks, ponds and greenery that cool streets during summer heat.
The Directive supports access to safe and hygienic toilets in public spaces and buildings, including the needs of children, older people, people with disabilities and people experiencing homelessness.
Until now, modern treatment was required for towns above 2,000 population equivalents (p.e.). The threshold will fall to agglomerations from 1,000 p.e., giving thousands of people in rural areas access to modern environmental infrastructure.
Suppliers of medicines and cosmetics will contribute to removing their residues from water. Pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies will cover 80% of the cost of the most advanced, quaternary treatment instead of leaving it solely to water customers.
Treatment sludge is not merely waste. Phosphorus – a valuable and finite raw material that can be used as fertiliser in agriculture – will increasingly be recovered from it.
Wastewater treatment plants will no longer be only electricity consumers. By 2045 the sector should be energy neutral through savings, energy recovered from wastewater and renewable sources.
Facts, data, contacts and materials for journalists.
Detailed information about its objectives, obligations and deadlines.
How Czech rivers have changed over the past 50 years, and why the work must continue.
Massive foam still appeared on the Vltava downstream from Větřní, and later Český Krumlov, in the second half of the twentieth century. Overall water quality was extremely poor.
The main cause was the direct discharge of untreated wastewater from paper production. Pollution could be seen and smelled; in the worst affected stretches, both oxygen and aquatic life disappeared.
Conditions today are dramatically different and prove how significantly wastewater treatment has improved river quality. We do not want to return to the conditions of the past.
