Project BEST aimed for capacity increase within wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), industrial companies and as well as local and regional authorities to support more efficient co-treatment, management and monitoring of industrial wastewater.

Produced outputs and documents

Good practices and achievements collected during the project were stored into a Toolbox of best practices,  LINK TO THE TOOLBOX

Ideas, experiences and examples for arranging seminars, workshops and training were collected into Training concept, LINK TO THE TRAINING CONCEPT

Summary

Why

Water utilities and wastewater treatment professionals in the Baltic Sea Region have recognized in their daily work several current challenges in the co-treatment of industrial wastewaters at the municipal waste water treatment plants:

• Water utilities require knowledge about potential treatment solutions and possible impact of industrial sewage on their treatment process. Furthermore, improved cooperation practices are needed between the water utilities, industrial companies and authorities responsible for permits and monitoring, to better plan, further develop and monitor the treatment processes on local level.
• Industrial companies require new knowledge and understanding about impacts of their effluents on municipal wastewater treatment process and sludge utilization.
• Authorities on local and regional level need knowledge about existing treatment challenges at the water utilities.

How

Capacity building work includes six international thematic workshops and study visits organized as follows

• Helsinki (FIN) Kick off on 6 – 8 February 2018 with emphasis on cooperation practices. Read more about this workshop.
• Gdansk (PL) workshop on 11-13 June 2018 with emphasis on Phosphorous recovery. Read more about this workshop.
• Toila (EST) workshop on 20-22 November 2018 with emphasis on hazardous substances. Read more about this workshop.
• Riga/Jelgava (LV) workshop 2-4 April 2019 with emphasis on effluents from food and dairy production. Read more about this workshop
• Kaliningrad (RUS) workshop 26 -28 November 2019 with emphasis on pre-treatment methods. Read more about this workshop
• Warsaw/Riga/Kaliningrad/ Põltsamaa /Helsinki Final conference was arranges as parallel national events in autumn 2020.

The capacity building materials and methods presented in international workshops were refined and adapted to local circumstances in national capacity development events in Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Kaliningrad organized by project partners in cooperation with national networks. Work resulted in learning materials and training concept to facilitate further training events and more efficient mangement and co-treatment of industrial wastewaters nationally and in the Baltic Sea Region.

Responsible partners

Gdansk Water Foundation
Estonian Waterworks Association
REC Poland, Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, REC Country Office Poland
ECAT-Kaliningrad