On Monday 28 May, the European Commission adopted a proposal aimed at encouraging and facilitating water reuse in the European Union for agricultural irrigation. The new regulation will help farmers to use waste water not fit for drinking to mitigate water shortages.
The draft regulation provides in particular for: (1) minimum requirements for the reuse of treated waste water from urban waste water treatment plants, covering microbiological elements (e.g. levels of E.coli bacteria) and monitoring requirements for routine and validation monitoring. This will guarantee that reclaimed water produced in accordance with the new rules will be safe for irrigation; (2) risk management whereby any additional hazards must be addressed for water reuse to be safe; (3) increased transparency. The public will have access to information online about water reuse practice in their member states.
Such measures may lead to water reuse for the purposes of agricultural irrigation up to 6.6 billion cubic metres annually, compared with 1.7 billion cubic metres if the Union did not establish any legal framework.
Reuse of over 50% of the volume of water theoretically available for irrigation from EU waste water treatment plants would make it possible to reduce the taking of surface or groundwater directly by over 5%, and hence the overall water loss would also be reduced by over 5%. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)