Water reclamation, recycling and reuse: implementation issues

Although known for nearly a century in its modern version, wastewater reuse is not widely applied in the European countries where water is a scarce resource, i.e. the Mediterranean ones. There are several reasons for this lack of success, namely: a) the lack of full knowledge on the hazards associated to the practice; b) the lack of application of the precautionary principle by the water administration all over Europe; c) difficulties in the assessment of reclaimed real quality in real time; d) difficulties in the implementation of scientific methodologies for the needed epidemiological studies; e) bad management of the social aspects related to the practice; e.g. acceptability, marketing; f) a never-ending discussion among scientists on the acceptable level of the standards to be applied; g) a real lack of accepted planning procedures for establishing reclamation and reuse in specific sites. Considering the issues mentioned, it is to indicate that the practical implementation of reclamation, recycling and reuse needs a pro-active policy from the interested stakeholders, devoted mainly to gain knowledge on the benefits of the practice, without forgetting its derived hazards and risks. The present activities in the field of reuse in the Mediterranean basin are based on gaining wider knowledge on the reuse possibilities and in the preparation and adaptation of environmentally-related tools, like life-cycle analysis (LCA), decision support systems (DSS), good reuse practices (GRP), impact assessment (IA) and hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP). Several of them are complementary or comprehensive, but were developed for other purposes and are being adapted to reclamation (as an industrial process) and reuse (as a practice, where e.g. agriculture, health and environmental sciences merge).