Treatment plants in Danube basin often oversized and unsustainable
A report published today by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) makes important recommendations for improving the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the urban waste water treatment plants in the Danube river basin. While EU spending played a key role in helping the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia achieve progress in meeting important EU water policy objectives, all countries incurred delays for complying with the rules and in taking up the EU money available. Although their plants generally treated the waste water adequately, their handling of sewage sludge and rain overflows was sometimes weak. A third of the plants are oversized and potentially unsustainable.
“The Danube is Europe's vital artery for business, travel, and ecosystems, but it is vulnerable to organic or other forms of pollution due to ineffective waste water treatment,” commented George Pufan, the ECA Member responsible for the report.
The EU auditors found that EU spending during the 2007-13 programme period played a key role in bringing forward waste water collection and treatment in all four countries. However, the progress they achieved was not sufficient to meet the EU deadlines for waste water treatment. The auditors also noted that the countries took up the available EU funds slowly, thus risking losing EU funding or creating a need for additional money from the national coffers.
They also found that around one third of the plants are oversized - even when taking into account planned future connections of households to the sewage system - and that the potential performance of the plants in the event of rain overflow cannot be assessed due to a lack of quantified information. The auditors also assessed compliance with EU and national regulations and found that the waste water treatment plants handled the sludge appropriately except in Romania and that they mostly complied with the effluent requirements from their discharge permits and the directive. In addition, the fact that national effluent requirements were sometimes stricter than those of the directives suggests a need for a review of the directives.
The auditors concluded that the financial sustainability of EU co-financed infrastructure was often questionable. In 90% of cases, waste water tariffs charged to users were too low. They did not allow full recovery of costs by the plants and were below the commonly accepted affordability level of four percent of household income. In addition, the auditors noted a lack of information on whether the infrastructure owners had built up sufficient financial reserves to allow adequate maintenance and the eventual renewal of plants.
The Danube river basin is Europe’s largest river basin, touching 19 countries and being vulnerable to water pollution from various sources. The EU contributed €7.9 billion for waste water treatment projects in the four Member States over the 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 programme periods.
Press release: Treatment plants in Danube basin often oversized and unsustainable - say EU Auditors
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