Danube Watch 3/2017 - The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive
The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive
What is the story behind the implementation of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD) in Austria and your personal role in it?
The European Commission has acknowledged Austria in its regular implementation reports as being one of the first member states to be in full compliance with the provisions of the UWWTD. This is because the country had already begun to implement measures for the collection and appropriate treatment of wastewater long before it became a member of the European Union. The country’s efforts to tackle pollution began in the late sixties and were a direct result of widespread protests from its people and a marked decline in tourism, a sector of considerable importance in Austria. By this time, excessive discharges of badly treated wastewater had led to the eutrophication of lakes, the severe pollution of rivers, algae blooms, fish kills and an unbelievable stench.
Eutrophication is caused by excessive amounts of nutrients entering a waterbody, and have for many decades posed a problem for the Danube River Basin. These nutrients are frequently due to run-off from the land and can disturb the ecological balance along the whole length of the river, causing the water to become murky and clogged with algal blooms. Entire food webs, including valuable fish stocks, can be seriously affected if adequate preventative measures are not taken.
When Austria became a member of the European Union, it already had a comprehensive enabling environment for the appropriate treatment of wastewater. Most of the infrastructure was already in place or on track (some facilities were still under construction or being upgraded). Legislation, that mirrored the UWWTD was also already in place, along with supportive legislation, obliging all households to be connected to the nearest sewer system. Public funding provided ample financial incentives for the establishment of the necessary water infrastructure. Priority was placed primarily on cleaning up hotspots around lakes, then in centralised urban areas covering the vast majority of wastewater load and finally in densely populated rural areas to ensure a high area-wide level of environmental protection. Education and training schemes were run in cooperation with universities to ensure the sound operation of both large and small installations. An integrated monitoring system was simultaneously set up to ensure that the performance criteria of the UWWTD were met all year round.
An association of stakeholders consisting of wastewater treatment plants operators and administrative representatives was also established to ensure high quality exchanges of experiences. Since then, results have shown a dramatic improvement in the quality of Austrian waters with excellent bathing water quality and a booming lake tourist industry. The rather modest contribution of my team has been to harmonise full compatibility of the implementation of the UWWTD with our previous national approach.
What were the main challenges in the early phases of implementation of the UWWTD in Austria to fulfill the EC requirements?
When Austria entered the European Union most of the infrastructure and an enabling environment for sound wastewater treatment was already in place. However, we still had to face two important challenges. The main challenge for my team was to find the most appropriate legal approach to implement the UWWTD. We opted for the approach of article 5 (4) with advanced treatment. This required Austria to ensure that the minimum percentage of reduction of the overall load entering all urban wastewater treatment plants was at least 75 % for total phosphorus and at least 75 % for total nitrogen.
At this time, we were not yet obliged to adopt this approach due to the fact that a number of countries, which were not yet EU Member States, separated us from the coastal areas of the Black Sea and the North Sea, both of which were suffering from eutrophication. The alternative at that time for most parts of Austria would have been limited to establishing secondary treatment facilities, with just a few small sensitive areas being designated for advanced treatment. Our decision was triggered by, amongst other things, our commitments to the Convention for the Protection of the River Danube. Looking back, this decision saved us from the substantial additional costs of having to upgrade our wastewater treatment plants when our neighbouring countries joined the EU and this approach to advanced treatment became obligatory. The second challenge was the administration required to ensure that all data required for the obligatory reporting to the Commission was collected on time in a central database at ministry level.
What have been the recent development requirements in the Austrian wastewater sector (maintenance of infrastructure, innovation and training programmes)?
Five decades later, we are now facing new development needs and requests from society. These include climate change, a circular economy, removal of micro pollutants and micro-plastic, digitalisation of operations and the maintenance of an ageing infrastructure.
Establishing an enabling environment for wastewater treatment through cooperation with universities, wastewater authorities and various other partnerships was the initial goal for cleaning up Austria’s waterbodies in the late sixties. However, today we are using these same partnerships to deal with new challenges, through research and pilot projects, to develop a sound approach that is tailored to the Austrian situation. In addition, we are providing financial support to make wastewater treatment climate proof. To achieve this, we are working to create solutions to minimise energy needs that include producing biogas and equipping installations with solar panels.
We are also providing financial support for the detailed mapping of the sewerage system and we intend to make it obligatory for all wastewater treatment plants with a population equivalent of more than 20,000 to reclaim phosphorous from sewage sludge. Last but not least, we are doing our utmost to raise awareness of the challenges of maintaining an ageing infrastructure. This includes running campaigns in close cooperation with the associations of water suppliers as well as wastewater treatment plants. A good example of this is the “VOR SORGEN” initiative, whereby we are supporting operators and municipalities to estimate investment requirements for concrete water infrastructures for the next ten years with the help of an online tool:
http://vorsorgecheck.wasseraktiv.at
More than twenty years later, what would be your take on the situation?
Looking back I am very happy that our Austrian water infrastructure is in good shape and, in the most cases, run by our municipalities. Personally, I have learnt a great deal. Above all, I am firmly convinced that the main challenge today, at national level, is not just to raise the funds necessary to put the water infrastructure in place; this of course remains a great challenge, but one that can be overcome with the help of European funds. The key challenge for me is to secure an enabling environment for wastewater treatment and its supportive legislation. Cooperation with stakeholder associations, universities and citizens is also vital, as they are the ones who will ultimately have to pay the bill at the end of the day.
Secondly, I have learnt that wastewater treatment really is a never ending story. Once the infrastructure is in place it has to be operated properly in order to meet the standards of the UWWTD. Moreover, it has to be maintained based on cost recovery and periodically renewed. Finally, new requests from society have to be met. This is why I consider an enabling environment for wastewater treatment, representing an excellent example of Good Water Governance, to be so important and a prerequisite of ensuring an up to date water infrastructure that serves the needs of society 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
