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Effect of three wastewater treatment plant effluents on stream ecological status

Abstract:

Within the project Sostaqua, this work has been carried out to evaluate the impact of wastewater from three wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), two located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona and one in Andorra, on the macroinvertebrate community. In each of these three WWTP, a monthly evaluation of the ecological status upstream and downstream from the sewage point was performed using different biological indices. While in Andorra no negative effect of the effluent was observed on the biological conditions, these were very largely reduced downstream of the other two sewage plants, which can be explained by the lower discharge dilution and the intense urbanization around Barcelona metropolitan region.