The need for water resources currently demands the development of measures to improve the management of these resources and increase their availability. However, these measures have an environmental impact that must be considered when carrying them out. The Water Framework Directive establishes that the economic and environmental costs of the activities carried out must be recovered, because this is necessary to ensure the sustainability of these activities and the continuity in the use of natural resources. The purification and reuse of wastewater is an activity within the framework of the circular economy that intends to reduce the environmental impact of contaminated water discharges and to increase the available resources. The problem is that this activity, being part of the production process, is linked to an environmental impact due to the use of chemical components, the construction of the facilities and, especially, the intensive energy consumption of the purification stations, since part of the energy comes from non-renewable sources. This environmental impact must be internalized in the cost structures through additional measures to mitigate it, so the objective of this paper is to determine the state of such internalization. Analyzing the costs of purification stations, the annual report of the EPSAR (Public Entity for Wastewater Sanitation of the Valencian Community) and the reports of the Hydrographic Confederations of Júcar and Segura, we can determine that there is no internalization in the stations, it is low in the EPSAR but increasing with time and for the Confederations the situation is complicated, as they cannot even recover their financial costs and the creation of several additional measures has been suspended. Finally, it has been found that there are economies of scale in terms of energy consumption of this activity, as well as significant potential energy savings during the purification process.
La presente investigación examina la situación actual de la depuración de aguas residuales en la Comunidad Valenciana de España con el objetivo de obtener información relevante para mejorar la gestión de las plantas y estudiar la viabilidad de la implantación de tratamiento terciario en lugares donde no se disponga de él. Los resultados obtenidos mediante técnicas de agrupación muestran la importancia del tamaño de la planta sobre los costes, pues en el análisis se puede observar el menor coste unitario soportado por las plantas de mayor tamaño debido a la presencia de economías de escala. Además, los rendimientos de eliminación de agentes contaminantes, el aprovechamiento de la capacidad instalada y la presencia de tratamiento terciario se muestran relevantes de cara a explicar las diferencias existentes entre plantas, de modo que los resultados obtenidos son de gran interés para el diseño y la gestión de las plantas de depuración. Por último, este estudio supone un incentivo para la obtención de información, pues muestra el gran margen de mejora existente en la realización de esta actividad.
The shortage of water resources and the complex institutional framework in Spain have originated several different organizations responsible for devising water policy measures that have to share the funding. With this distribution of functions, each organization is responsible for some tasks and with funding to perform them. However, taking into account that in Spain the full financing of all aspects of water policy is not achieved, it is understandable that the Hydrographic Confederations are not capable of recovering the costs of their activities. We must add that the distribution of financial resources may not be the most appropriate, which would leave the Hydrographic Confederations in a complicated situation, this paper intends to examine the current financial situation of these organizations. The results of the analysis show that there is a lack of recovery of financial costs in the main activities, which would be offset by a transfer of external funds to the water policy, since this must necessarily be financed. This also implies that, if the environmental costs are added to the financial costs, the result is a very low cost recovery. In addition, there are activity plans that are not being carried out due to the lack of financing, so it seems appropriate to suggest an increase in prices or water pricing to compensate for this lack of funding.
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