Environmental controls for wastewater treatment plants: hierarchical planning, integrated approach, and functionality assessment

摘要

This article presents the problems faced by wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) controls and the organization of consequential activities, giving priority to those stipulated by the regional environmental protection agencies through a hierarchical assessment according to the environmental importance of the pressure sources. The European Recommendation 2001/331/EC bases the environmental controls of industrial sites and WWTPs on an integrated approach surpassing the simple analytic control at the discharge point in the receiving water body. This integrated approach requires documentary, technical, management, and analytic controls. In the last few years, the Veneto Regional Environmental Prevention and Protection Agency (ARPAV-Italy) has developed and applied a protocol and checklist for the implementation of the European Recommendation for WWTPs. The checklist includes the functionality assessment of the WWTP in the cases of discharge control delegation to the plant management as consented in Annex 5, the third part of the Italian Decree 3/04/2006?n. 152. In this article, the general framework of environmental controls on public WWTPs in the Veneto region is described, presenting a proposal for integrated control and the assessment of the behavior of the WWTP discharges, with reference to the stipulated limit values, along with statistical multivariate analysis, with the aim of developing an integrated sustainable interactive management approach (Veerbek and Wind, 2001 Veerbek, M and Wind, H G. 2001. Improving control in water management. Meeting conditions for control with the ISI-approach. Water Resour Manage , 15: 403–421. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®]?[Google Scholar], Water Resource Management 15:403–421).