Interactive map of status of all Waste Water Treatment Plants in Europe

The European Environment Agency (EEA) recently published a new interactive map of the status of all Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP’s) in Europe. At a glance you can see how every Treatment Plants in Europe is performing. Austria and the Netherlands are fully compliant to Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD). Some member states like Spain, Portugal and Ireland are having difficulties with the implementation of the Directive and of some countries there are no data available.

The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive is distinguishing between the facilities of small towns and big cities. The interactive map is showing the compliance at agglomerations level and the generated load of a WWTP. The map is showing the performance of treatment plants with a generated load over 1.000. 000 m3, a generated load between 1.000.000 m3 and 150.000 m3 and treatment plants with a generated load smaller than 150.00 m3. Small communities seem to be in the majority as it comes to non compliant waste water treatment plants.

Treatment types

The interactive map is also giving insight in the treatment types. You can see if wastewater is treated according a primary, secondary, tertiary treatment process. The data are being updated frequently, so it is well worth to return to the interactive map regularly.

Global Database

Besides a European database of WWTP’s exists a global database of 58,000 WWTP’s. This database of HydroWASTE combines national and regional data sets. About 1.2 million km of the global river network contains treated wastewater from upstream wastewater treatment plants. About 90,000 km of this network receives effluent from treatment plants that only provide primary wastewater treatment.