Urban Wastewater Treatment

This legal notice transposed Directive 91/271/EC on Urban Wastewater Treatment. The aim of this directive is to protect the aquatic environment from the adverse effects of discharges of untreated or improperly treated urban waste water and waste water from industrial sectors and concerns the collection, treatment and discharge of domestic water, mixture of waste water and wastewater from certain indsutrial sectors as illustrated in the figure below:

The obligations under this legal notice can be summarized as follows:

• Provision of urban waste water collecting systems (sewerage) and treatment plants for all agglomerations above 2,000 population equivalents;
• Provision of a legal framework for specific authorization for all discharges of urban waste water and industrial waste water from particular sectors, as well as for all discharges of industrial waste water into urban waste water systems;
• Requires the phase out of any dumping or discharge of sewage sludge into surface waters;
• Requests that the treated urban waste water discharges and their effects are adequately monitored;

Authorizations for discharges from the urban wastewater treatment plants are provided through the environmental permits which are currently issuing under the upcoming Environmental Permit Regulations. The environmental permit stipulates that the discharge from the urban waste water treatment plants must comply with the emission limit values which are given in Annex I table 1 of the said legal notice.

Discharges into the sewerage system from various industrial sectors are permitted by the Water Services Corporation. This authorization ensures that no undesirable chemicals enters the sewerage system and requires operators to carry out regular monitoring of what is discharged into the wastewater network. For industries and companies requiring a sewer discharge permit the relevant form can be downloaded from the Water Services Corporation website.

The urban waste water treatment regulation also require that the competent authorities legal notice requires the Competent Authority to designate sensitive areas and these have been designated through L.N. 120 of 2005.

The technical and administrative requirements under this directive are given under the following articles:

Article 15:

• Monitoring of discharges from urban waste water treatment plants
• Monitoring of waters subject to discharges from the urban waste water treatment plants

This monitoring data is to be made available to the Commission within 6 months of receipt of a request.

Article 16:

This article requires member states to submit of a situation report to inform the Commission and the public on disposal of urban waste water and sludge in the area. This situation report is required every 2 years.

Article 17:

This article requires Member States to provide the Commission with information on the status and programme of implementation of the Directive This report is to be updated every 2 years.