Application of European Approaches to Determination of Technological Indicators of the Best Available Techniques in the Field of Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

The year 2014 was a turning point in the transition of the main sectors of the Russian economy to a new track of environmental regulation and the introduction of obligations for first category’ s objects of negative environmental impact to receive a unified complex document containing mandatory requirements in the field of environmental protection. The main element in the application for a comprehensive environmental permit is the results of calculations of technological standards based on technological indicators of the best available techniques.The determination of technological indicators of the best available techniques takes place in the process of developing and updating information and technical reference documents (BREFs) on the best available techniques. There is currently no unified methodology for determining the technological indicators of the best available techniques. In the process of determining them in Russia, an expert assessment, a reference to the opinion of the industry professional community, or a compromise between control and supervisory authorities, departmental executive authorities and enterprises prevails. Methods. The authors have obtained a set of data through questionnaires from wastewater treatment plants of various output and water treatment techniques used. We have a developed a unified questionnaire that enables to get general information on the plants under study, as well as detailed information on pollutants’ discharge and the use wastewater treatment techniques. Results. In this article, the technological indicators of the best available technologies in the field of wastewater treatment using centralized wastewater disposal systems of settlements or urban districts were determined based on the proposed European approaches. The results obtained showed that the resulting total range generally corresponds to the values of technological indicators of the best available techniques established by the Government of the Russian Federation for water treatment enterprises. Thus, it is possible to judge the applicability (taking into account the expert assessment) of this approach for determining the technological indicators of the best available techniques in other information and technical reference documents (BREFs).