Urban Waste Water Treatment
Directive 91/271/EEC concerning urban waste-water treatment, one of the most notorious in all environmental law, establishes requirements with respect to the collection, the treatment, and the discharge of urban waste-water and the treatment and discharge of waste-water from certain industrial sectors (Article 1) by combining quality objectives and emission limit values.
The agglomerations with a “population equivalent” (p.e.) of more than 15,000 should have been equipped at the latest by 31 December 2000 with urban waste-water collecting systems, and those with a population equivalent of more than 2,000 by 2005 (Article 4). For the purposes of the Directive “‘1 p.e. (population equivalent)’ means the organic biodegradable load has a five-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) of 60g of oxygen per day” (Article 2(6)). Such collecting systems must take into account waste water treatment requirements, and their design, construction and maintenance must be “in accordance with the best technical knowledge not entailing excessive costs” (Annex I-A).
The Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter – the CJEU) ruled that waste-water which escapes from a sewerage network maintained by a statutory sewerage undertaker constitutes waste within the meaning of EU waste legislation. While the scope of application of such waste legislation generally excludes waste-water, this is only “to the extent that they are covered by other community legislation” (currently Article 2(2) of Directive 2008/98/EC on waste and repealing certain Directives). Yet, Directive 91/271/EEC had been found by the CJEU not to be “other legislation within the meaning of waste legislation because such legislation should include precise provisions organising its management as waste and ensuring a level of protection which is at least equivalent to that resulting from waste legislation.” For the CJEU, Directive 91/271/EEC does not ensure such a level of protection and it does no more than lay down, as regards leakage of waste-water, a duty to prevent the risk of such leaks when designing, constructing and maintaining collecting system in relation to the disposal of waste or decontamination of contaminated soil (Case C-252/05 Thames Water utilities, paras. 32-38).
Where the establishment of a collecting system is not justified, either because it would produce no environmental benefits or because it would involve excessive costs, individual systems or other appropriate systems which achieve the same level of environmental protection shall be used (Article 3). Significant delays occurred in the implementation of that obligation.
Andrej Kmecl