Brussels Approves Plan to Use Treated Wastewater for Irrigation

The European Commission is step­ping up mea­sures to cope with the severe drought, which is con­cern­ing farm­ers and reduc­ing crop yields across the con­ti­nent.

Reduced vol­umes of avail­able water for irri­ga­tion are sig­nif­i­cantly affect­ing sta­ple crops, includ­ing olives, in coun­tries such as Italy, Portugal and Spain.

However, the effects of the drought on agri­cul­ture have spread well beyond the con­fines of south­ern Europe. It also has impacted France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

As a result, Brussels has pub­lished new guide­lines paving the way for the wide­spread use of treated urban waste­water in agri­cul­ture.

The guide­lines build on already agreed upon mea­sures that should have come into force soon, such as the water reuse reg­u­la­tion, which sets ​“uni­form min­i­mum water qual­ity require­ments for the safe reuse of treated urban waste­water in agri­cul­tural irri­ga­tion.”

Besides ask­ing mem­ber coun­tries to push water man­age­ment to the top of their agen­das, the guide­lines also set out min­i­mum mon­i­tor­ing require­ments, risk man­age­ment rules to assess pos­si­ble health and envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards and rules for project and fund­ing trans­parency.

The doc­u­ment also includes sug­gested inter­ven­tions for sev­eral crops and val­i­da­tion mon­i­tor­ing pro­to­cols. For exam­ple, the guide­lines rec­om­mend that table olive pro­duc­ers only use advanced drip irri­ga­tion tech­niques.

While being her­alded as part of an ongo­ing European water man­age­ment strat­egy, the new guide­lines are meant to bring relief at a very chal­leng­ing moment.

According to the European Drought Monitor, the continent’s ​“severe” drought con­tin­ues to expand and become worse. The group added that com­pe­ti­tion for water was begin­ning ear­lier than usual, and reduced crop yields are expected.

“Freshwater resources are scarce and increas­ingly under pres­sure,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, the E.U.’s envi­ron­ment, fish­eries and oceans com­mis­sioner.

“In times of unprece­dented tem­per­a­ture peaks, we need to stop wast­ing water and use this resource more effi­ciently to adapt to the chang­ing cli­mate and ensure the secu­rity and sus­tain­abil­ity of our agri­cul­tural sup­ply,” he added. ​“Today’s guide­lines can help us do just that and secure the safe cir­cu­la­tion, across the E.U., of food prod­ucts grown with reclaimed water.”

During its intro­duc­tion of the guide­lines, the com­mis­sion said uni­form min­i­mum require­ments would boost con­sumer con­fi­dence and ensure the sin­gle marker for agri­cul­tural pro­duce func­tioned prop­erly.

The com­mis­sion added that the use of treated waste­water would con­tribute to the E.U. goal of reduc­ing food sys­tems’ envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and increas­ing the resilience of the continent’s farm­ers.

• European Commission