Removing pollutants early 'could benefit water quality'

Removing pollutants at the earliest possible stage in the treatment process is advantageous for water quality.

This is according to Chris Williams, managing director in Europe for Hydro International, a specialist engineering group that develops, designs and implements solutions for the control and treatment of storm water and wastewater.

Mr Williams wrote on WaterWorld that new technology which implements smaller local filtration control could also provide substantial capital gains and help resolve the challenges of controlling contamination caused by storm water runoff.

His comments follow the European Parliament and Council of Ministers' adoption of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), which signals that an integrated approach to catchment management will be adopted across Europe.

"The new technology could offer an important solution to meeting WFD requirements for controlling pollution as close as possible to its point of entry into the drainage system," he stated.

Mr Williams added that researchers in the US have recently developed a small footprint, low-maintenance filtration solution that can be targeted at specific sources of pollution.

Written by Joseph Hutton