Part II: Treatment alternatives, monitoring issues and resulting costs

EU Directive 98/83, which aims at achieving beneficial effects in the quality of water and in public health, has set standards for water intended for human consumption, monitoring requirements of the new standards, and strategies to take remedial action to address failures. The incorporation of the Directive’s content into the regulations of each Member State will benefit consumers who receive drinking water that meets up-to-date World Health Organization standards. As a result, they will be less likely to experience long-term adverse health effects. However, new costs arise from the new regulations that fall on water suppliers deriving from the need to meet the more stringent standards, and they are passed on by water authorities to consumers, mostly businesses and industry, in the form of increased water charges. In an attempt to evaluate these costs, an overview of main drinking water treatments is presented and different treatment schemes are analyzed to obtain cost curves by means of national (Italian) and international published data. Moreover, monitoring costs for water quality analysis, based on the requirements of Directive 98/83/EC, are evaluated and compared with the ones derived from the previous 80/778/EEC.

With the introduction of EU Directive 98/83, a new set of standards for water intended for human consumption, as derived from the World Health Organization guidelines (1993), aims at achieving beneficial effects in the quality of water and in public health through the monitoring for permissible concentrations in drinking water of potentially damaging substances and remedial action to address failures. Specifically, recent improvements in scientific understanding and technology in the water sector will be incorporated into the national water regulation of each EU Member State. It is worth emphasizing that the standards, mainly based on World Health Organization guidelines, were developed to ensure safe lifetime exposure to drinking water. Therefore, especially for the chemical parameters, a limited and/or temporary failure to meet the standards does not necessarily give rise to any risk to health, whereas remedial action might take a long time to put in place, and the provision of water from alternative sources may be impractical. This study presented a description of main drinking water treatments and related costs together with the monitoring costs necessary to meet the EU directive requirements. Specifically, cost curves including both capital, operation and maintenance costs, have been developed on the basis of national (Italian) and international published data for three different treatment schemes, showing an increasing effectiveness level. Costs for monitoring in accordance with Directive 98/83/EC were also evaluated (costs of analysis) and compared with the monitoring costs as derived from previous regulations (i.e., national regulations based on Directive 80/778/EEC). It should be highlighted that it is difficult to estimate the cost to the water industry in compliance with the single national Drinking Water Regulations since a project (e.g., a new treatment facility) will be implemented not only to comply with pre-existing and new regulations but also with different objectives such as to increase treatment capacity and efficiency and to install automated monitoring. In order to increase the sustainability of the enforcement of the EU Directive, the following could be considered: C weigh human health risks against the cost of monitoring for controlling the regulated substances; C allow more flexibility to small drinking water systems to comply with current and future requirements; C develop appropriate programs at the national level to support the upgrading of water treatment facilities and the enforcement of monitoring schemes; C implement nationwide water resource monitoring programs to reduce the risk of contaminating water supplies intended for human consumption; C adopt appropriate water-saving measures to reduce the demand for drinking water and, as a result, the related costs; C increase investments in the water sector over the next years so that technology breakthrough might improve the efficiency of the water services while decreasing related costs.