Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2016 (96. évfolyam)
2016 / 3. szám - HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT - Juhász Endre - Major Veronika: Sanitation in Hungary
30 Hungarian Journal of Hydrology Vol. 96. No. 3. 2016. WASTEWATER COLLECTION AND TREATMENT AFTER THE POLITICAL CHANGES OF 1989-1990 AND NOWADAYS After the national parliamentary election in 1990 stable democratic institutions developed and negotiations to join the European Union had begun. In 1st May 2004 Hungary became the member of the EU. After 1990 drinking water supply was the priority again resulting in high quality water supply network for each and every settlement in Hungary by the end of 1994. Regarding wastewater treatment and collection, the ISPA and PHARE programmes provided support for EU candidate countries. By the beginning of the 1990s it became clear that policy change will be necessary in professional and economic sense. Since 80% of collected wastewater was generated in Budapest and the 22 county towns the Government approved a new programme for the wastewater treatment capacity development for the capital Budapest and 22 additional county towns in 1994. The implementation of the governmental programme was funded mostly from ISPA and PHARE support of the EU. One example is the Nyíregyháza WWTP (Fig. 12). Figure 12. Nyíregyháza Wastewater Treatment Plant, 160 000 PE (2001) (Photo: Nyírségvíz Ltd Archive) In the frame of the „új Magyarország”(New Hungary) development plan and the ongoing „Széchényi 2020” development programme, the Cohesion Funds available with EU membership provided support for handling problems of wastewater collection and treatment in settlements over 2000 PE. The most significant development of this period was the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant of Budapest (CWWTP) and completion of wastewater collection network for the entire city of Budapest (Fig. 13). Figure 13. The Central Wastewater Treatment Plant of Budapest (1.35 million PE) (Photo from URL1) The (CWWTP) was the biggest element of the Liv- ing-Danube project. Prior to the operation of this plant, only 50% of the wastewater was treated in Budapest. This resulted in severe contamination, and threatened several indigenous fish species in the Danube. With the new treatment plant and with the development of collection network, practically complete wastewater collection and treatment have been achieved in Budapest. Nowadays, drinking water supply network is available in every settlements in Hungary, and 95% of the households are connected to it. Fig. 14 shows the improvement in the ratio of households with access to drinking water supply and wastewater collection network. As a result of the developments between 1990 and 2012 new wastewater infrastructure was built in many settlements, this way the gap between drinking water supply and sanitation had been narrowed to 85%. 90 0 30.0 20.0 10,0 0.0 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 Year Figure 14. Percentage of dwellings connected to public water supply and sewerage networks (Source: URL2) Besides, the quality of treatment has significantly improved after 1990. While in 1990 54% of the collected wastewater went through only mechanical treatment before reaching the recipient, by 2013 in 75% of the treatment plants had tertiary treatment stage (Fig. 15). The leap between 2000 and 2015 brought some undesirable effects as well. EU members must comply with the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. Albeit wastewater collection and treatment of settlements over 2000 PE almost reached the level defined in the Directive, the situation of small settlements below 2000 PE still unsolved for most of them. In 1991 the daily water consumption was 160 1/person/day, nowadays it is only half of it, causing serious operational and sustainability problems. As a result of the developments significant wastewater treatment capacity was established. However, the capacity is just partly utilised (especially the hydraulic capacity) (Fig. 16) because of the decreased water consumption, slow rate of connecting the households to the network and the oversized capacity. As all around the world, utilization of sewage sludge is a great challenge in Hungary. Despite the fact that concentration of pollutants in the released sewage sludge do not exceed the limits set by EU. For bigger wastewater treatment plants energy recovery is a natural option, but the changing legal and financial environment is a major stumbling block to any form of sewage sludge utilisation
