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Box 1 Non-connected dwellings

Non-connected dwellings is a diffuse source pollution pressure caused by discharge from households not connected to urban waste water treatment plants or other collection systems ([1]).

In 2017, 11 % of the European population (approximately 50 million people), were not connected to waste water collection systems with the highest shares located in the Eastern part of Europe ([2]). Based on the 2^nd RBMP, 21 WFD countries reported significant diffuse source pollution pressures caused by discharges not connected to sewage systems in 10 % of all surface water bodies. Furthermore, about 7.5 % of all groundwater area is affected by this pressure ([3]).

If the waste water is not properly treated by the installation and maintenance of individual appropriate systems, discharges of untreated waste water to waters can lead to nutrient input, or load of disease-causing organisms with potentially human health risks in e.g. bathing waters ([4]).

Measures to reduce water pollution are mainly technical and include inter alia waste water package plants, sand filters, drain fields, seepage pits or constructed wetlands with varying purification efficiencies (Vorne, Virpi et al., 2019). Furthermore, national regulatory frameworks have been elaborated to require the installation of appropriate treatment systems, e.g. in Bulgaria, which requires that the water is collected and treated within watertight cesspools (Grebot, et al., 2019). However, the installation of treatment systems, monitoring and maintenance are mainly in responsibility of the homeowners, and technical or financial support by local, regional, or national authorities is rather rare. This makes it difficult to enforce those treatment techniques in single houses or very small agglomerations.

There is still a huge knowledge gap on the impacts of discharges from non-connected dwellings, because neither the UWWTD nor the WFD directly regulate mitigation measures, and reporting obligations solely address connected dwellings with more than 2 000 population equivalents. This hinder information and conclusions on the implementation and use on the effectiveness of individual technical treatment systems. There is a need to further improve the knowledge on this issue, the adaption and harmonization of both WFD and UWWTD measures and reporting, further financial support for homeowners, and control of implemented techniques (EC 2019a; Grebot, et al., 2019).    

([1]) Source: https://www.eea.europa.eu/archived/archived-content-water-topic/wise-help-centre/glossary-definitions/scattered-dwellings, modified.

([2]) Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=ten00020&plugin=1

([3]) Source: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/dashboards/wise-wfd, 30.03.2020

([4]) Source: https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/european-waters/water-use-and-environmental-pressures/uwwtd/urban-waste-water-treatment