IMPEL launches a first report on Wastewater treatments plants: how to deal with inspections.
The report provides an overview of the regulatory framework and monitoring requirements of urban and industrial waste water. The report is the result of the work of the IMPEL subgroup “Wastewater”, that is part of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) Implementation project team. It intends to be a first approach to deal with the topic of assessing compliance of wastewater discharging by industrial installations with EU legislation; consequently, it is mainly addressed to inspection authorities that have to tackle this task.
The report contains guidelines to help inspectors in the preparation of inspections to industrial installations that have their own wastewater treatment plants. It embodies a checklist (Annex 1 – Part 2: Environmental inspection checklist for industrial wastewater) that will facilitate and serve as support to the inspectors performing this type of inspections. BATs about wastewater management are illustrated. Indications and practical tools for wastewater inspections are presented (checklist), with a glance to sampling activities too. Results of a survey that was circulated among Member States are summarised (see Annex 2).
In the Supporting IED Implementation meeting that took place in Gdansk in June 2019, this guidance was tested by inspectors from different Member States on an inspection to an industrial wastewater plant inside a refinery plant. The results of the joint inspection have been presented in a plenary session at the meeting.
The (IED) Implementation project has been one of the longest running projects within IMPEL and it has created several subgroups that work on specific topics that are crucial and present implementation or compliance challenges in different Member States. The “Wastewater” subgroup has worked on the topic of industrial wastewater treatment – which is of the utmost importance within the European Union (EU) – and developed this first report and guidelines.
This guidance is to be seen as a “living document” that will be updated in the near future with inputs from the IED Project, other projects running within the Water & Land Expert Team and feedback from practitioners. Training sessions using this guidance will happen in the foreseeable future; to this regard, a synergy with the IMPEL Integrated Water Approach project (which has produced a guidance for permit writers on the same topic) has already been activated.