Features of achieving standard wastewater treatment indicators in the process of implementing projects for the upgrade of wastewater treatment facilities

Summary

There is currently an urgent need to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities extensively built across the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. By now, they are obsolete and outmoded. Moreover, the technologies used at the time they were built cannot provide for meeting the current requirements for the composition of effluents discharged into water bodies. The first large-scale wastewater treatment facility reconstruction project in the modern Russian history was the «Volga Reclamation» Federal Project, that involved the upgrade or new construction of 139 wastewater treatment facilities located in the Volga River catchment basin. However, a review of the project progress by a parliamentary oversight group revealed numerous systemic problems in the wastewater treatment sector, preventing virtually all completed projects from achieving the required performance standards. The interdepartmental body Incident no. 55 «Wastewater treatment facilities» was entrusted with investigating the situation and finding a solution. One of the identified problems is the inadequate standardization and monitoring system for discharged effluents that sets the requirements for the elimination of pollutants that are impossible to remove by the existing biological treatment technologies for technical and economic reasons. This issue requires immediate resolution, taking into account the interests of all stakeholders, as inactivity could lead to a lack of interest from qualified construction companies in the projects of upgrading wastewater treatment facilities and, consequently, to the complete degradation of the existing facilities, causing irreparable harm to the environment.

Key words

wastewater biological treatment , municipal wastewater treatment facilities , pollution discharge regulations , the Volga River reclamation