Impacto
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year
Bolinches Quero, Antonio and De Stefano, Lucia and Paredes-Arquiola, Javier (2020) Adjusting wastewater treatment effluent standards to protect the receiving waters: the case of low-flow rivers in central Spain. Environmental Earth Sciences, 79 (446). ISSN 1866-6280
![]() |
PDF
Restringido a Repository staff only 1MB |
Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12665-020-09184-z
Abstract
Freshwater quality is deteriorating worldwide. In populated areas, urban pollution is the main pressure on surface continental waters, but intensive wastewater treatment is costly. Setting standards for treatment of wastewater before discharge is a major policy instrument for water authorities, balancing environmental gains and operational costs. Discharge permits usually define concentration limits at the discharge point of the plant effluent. This approach, however, may not guarantee the good status of the receiving waters. Discharge permits should be directly linked to pollutant concentration in the river. Our paper develops an approach to adaptively adjust discharge permits and applies it to Madrid and the Manzanares river, a city of more than 3 million inhabitants discharging its treated wastewater to a stream having less than 2 m3 s−1 average flow. Stricter limits to 5-day biological oxygen demand (11 mg O2 L−1), ammonium (0.5 mg N-NH4 L−1), nitrate (5.9 mg N-NO3 L−1), and phosphate (0.17 mg P-PO4 L−1) at plant effluent are required to meet the river environmental objectives. The results can be generalized to assess wastewater management decisions in other geographical areas.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Wastewater, Water framework directive, Water quality, Tagus basin |
Subjects: | Sciences > Geology > Hidrology |
ID Code: | 62962 |
Deposited On: | 04 Nov 2020 16:53 |
Last Modified: | 04 Nov 2020 16:53 |
Origin of downloads
Repository Staff Only: item control page