Proceedings

With transposition of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) into the Environmental Permitting Regime (EPR) in England and Wales further regulatory requirements are being placed on some wastewater businesses as AMP6 approaches. These new regulations highlight the relationship between the urban wastewater treatment and waste regulatory regimes, and in some situations extend controls to the treatment of sewage sludge for both recovery and disposal routes. This paper explores the relationships between these different regulations and how they may affect operation of sewage sludge treatment under certain circumstances. Should environmental permits be required one particular difficulty is the retrospective application of today’s permit standards in particular meeting best available technology (BAT) criteria for existing infrastructure. Using regulator accepted examples for sewage infrastructure that required previous Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) permits, compliance with permit conditions via a groundwater risk assessment approach are presented. This approach avoided retrofitting infrastructure controls such as double tank lining and has saved one sewerage company significant expenditure