Energy consumption: Sewage treatment works require a significant amount of energy to operate, leading to high operational costs and greenhouse gas emissions.However, we need to remain vigilant to new chemicals. For example, they are believed to remove up to about 99% of microplastics present in sewage from things like nylon clothes. Treatment works do a good job of removing newer contaminants that they weren't originally designed to deal with. Companies are planning long-term investment and treatment work upgrades to respond to this threat, as well as tackling the additional demands on the system from population growth and runoff from urban expansion. Increased storm events and rainfall intensity can overwhelm processes and make it harder for bacteria to break down the sewage. Not only is wastewater treatment a significant cause of greenhouse gas emissions, treatment works are themselves heavily affected by climate change. Industry is bringing forward the largest ever infrastructure programme to upgrade storm overflows, including wastewater treatment works, but also wants to see a step-up in investment in sewer networks. Water companies have invested £47billion* since the 1990s to improve wastewater infrastructure, but some of the legacy still remains from previous generations. Source: EEA Data The water industry is addressing four separate challenges: For example, the levels of biochemical oxygen demand (used to indicate the short-term impact on the oxygen levels) in treated waste water in the UK are roughly 40% lower than the amounts found in France. Levels of UK waste water treatment are higher than other European countries. In addition, many rivers that were heavily polluted in the past (during the industrial revolution) are now home to salmon and otters, further demonstrating the positive impact of these measures.Ī key measure of the quality of sewage treatment is 'biological oxygen demand', which tracks one of the biggest immediate impacts on rivers from discharged sewage. As a result of these efforts, there has been a notable increase in snails, worms and insects in rivers across England, indicating an improvement in water quality. This is important because phosphorus can deprive water of oxygen, and ammonia can harm aquatic life. For example, key pollutants discharged into rivers like phosphorus and ammonia have been significantly reduced (67% less phosphorus and 79% less ammonia than in 1995). Sewage treatment works are doing a much better job at treatment than ever before. If the river that it will be returned to is particularly sensitive the cleaned water can be further slowly filtered through a bed of sand. The quality of the cleaned wastewater is strictly regulated and companies thoroughly test it (see below).
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