Relevant Aspects for Commodity Science and Economics of the Policies for Reclamation of Urban Wastewater in the Apulia Region (Italy)

In Italy, urban wastewaters subjected to an advanced tertiary treatment, can be reused for irrigation, civil and industrial uses according to the Ministerial Decree n.185/2003. Regional authorities of Apulia (Italy), in order to contrast the chronic water scarcity and the groundwater overexploitation with consequent sea water intrusion, promulgated the “Water Resources Protection and Management Master Plan” in which the reuse of treated wastewater, especially in agriculture, plays a relevant role. In the Apulia region there are 186 urban wastewater treatment plants 14 of which are currently eligible for reuse and 26 need additional improvements because of from the technological, infrastructural, logistic and economic standpoints, they cannot be involved in the wastewater reuse. One of the major drawbacks is the lack of an advanced tertiary treatment line, in particular in the disinfection unit, needed to reach the quality parameters for water reclamation. Among utilizable disinfection techniques, chemical ones suffer the disinfection by-product formation with consequential adverse health effects, whereas physical ones the high electrical energy requirements, with the associated environmental burdens due to the generation of electricity from nonrenewables, as the case of Italy. The adaptation costs of the existing plants for reclamation depend on the size and construction characteristics, in particular on the destination (in surface water bodies or soil) of the treated wastewater for which they were originally designed. Moreover reclamation costs depend also on the total annual volume of the reclaimed water delivered, thus indicating the importance of the scale economies that stakeholders have to take into account in planning the adaptation of an existing urban wastewater treatment plant for water reclamation.