Wastewater Forum

WASTEWATER RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY SUPPORT FORUM

Meeting 19th June 2015
Please note that for older reports some links will be to sites that are no longer active.

This was the Forum’s 56th meeting was held at CIWEM’s HQ, 106-109 Saffron Hill, London. It was the first to be chaired by Barrie Howe, Environment Agency where his interests include new substances and existing regulations; the Consenting Team; the Environmental Management Team (including waste sites); water quality; flexible permitting; carbon emissions; phosphate; Environmental Permitting Regulations [permits] appeals.

Members of the Forum shared the concerns of CIWEM’s technical water and wastewater panels that there is a skills gap in the UK water sector, which the sector’s managers seem to be in denial about, for example the interview with Lynn Cooper CEO of the Institute of Water published in Water & Wastewater Treatment. The situation was exemplified by news that universities are closing their water MSc courses because WaSCs are not recruiting.

Reports from topic leads

New Drivers and Legislation – Barrie Howe, EA

• The chemicals section at the National Office is looking at the bioavailable metals aspect of the water framework directive. The UKTAG has developed a tool that involves DOC, pH and alkalinity. [Bioavailability is dynamic and changes with the chemical and physical environment, for example if the chemistry is such that a metal is complexed, precipitated and then buried in sediment its bioavailability to fish will be low unless conditions change and it is remobilised – TE].
• Replacing water concentrations with biota standards for permitting hazardous and dangerous substances.
• Phosphate removal trials to get as close as possible to 0.1 mgP/litre.

Surface Water Drainage – Nick Orman, WRc

• CIWEM’s UDG (Urban Drainage Group – formerly WaPUG) is nearing completing new modelling guides:
• Rainfall Guide
• Marine & Estuary Modelling Guide
  The next guide on the programme is the Sewer Modelling guide.
• WRc has just completed two projects for UKWIR
• the effectiveness of dosing for controlling FOG (fat, oil and grease) in sewers, which found dosing can be effective in the right place.
• food waste disposers, which found that if the condition of sewers is such that they convey sanitary waste, they will also convey to output of food waste disposers.
  UKWIR’s [high] pricing policy means that its reports have little impact on the overall development of scientific knowledge.
• The design guidance for sewer relining needs to be aligned with the EN 1990 series of structural dosing codes.

Technical Presentations 13:00

The Many Faces of the Chemcatcher Passive Sampler
Dr. Adil Bakir, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth

In recent years, there has been significant interest in the use of passive sampling devices either alongside or as a replacement to spot water sampling procedures. A number of devices are available for different types of pollutant and for varying field applications. The presentation will cover the background to passive sampling procedures and then discuss how the Chemcatcher® device is now a highly versatile tool for screening as well as the semi-quantitative and quantitative assessment of different classes of chemicals in various aquatic environments. This device and other commercially available designs, offer potential for improving the quality of data in regulatory monitoring programmes.

Nutrient Platforms
Tim Evans FWR & Tim Evans environment

On 29th April there was a meeting at the Royal Society of Chemistry titled “Growing The UK Nutrient Platform”. The linear model for fertilisers has been questioned for some years. It started with phosphate, Sweden was the first country to set recycling targets, Germany and Netherlands followed. The European Commission has started to act. The earth system boundary for fixed reactive nitrogen has been exceeded by nearly 4 times – recovery instead of removal (biological oxidation+reduction) is starting to be applied. We can see the direction of travel, will the UK be a leader or a follower, a technology seller or a buyer?