PRESTO Final Conference - the last full scope project’s event, but the first opportunity for partners to learn about waste water management in Finland

As reported before, central event of PRESTO Final Conference – Helsinki Public Forum “Save the Sea – Investing in Waste Water Management in Belarus” has marked project’s ending. However, PRESTO partners’ programme included several other meetings and excursions, taking place during 11-13^th of February.

At Kakkola WTTP. Photo: Nicholas Petroff

In the morning before the Public Forum, partners visited Viikinmaki wastewatertreatment plant and Aalto University’s Water Laboratory. The first group went to the largest WWTP in Finland, the Viikinmäki plant, treating the domestic and industrial wastewater of the capital city and five neighbouring municipalities. The second group had the opportunity to gain an insight into the work of Water Laboratory at Aalto University’s School of Engineering, which is an excellent example of the water sector education in Finland.

Forum Marinum collection. Photo: Paulius Vaitelis

The next day, project consortium headed to Turku, where were scheduled two more excursions and a ferry cruise to Stockholm. Site visit to Kakkola WTTP enabled participants to compare the plant with the one previously visited in Helsinki, and therefore to have a more general idea of the modern waste water treatment in major Finnish cities. Also, project partners have visited Forum Marinum Maritime Centre and learned about seafaring and ship-building history of Turku and other ports in Finland.

The ultimate exploration took place on the Viking Grace ferry cruiser to Stockholm. The ship, completed in Turku shipyard in 2013, represents the new generation of environment-friendly large scale passenger ferry powered by liquified natural gas. 

During the cruise the final Partners seminar was organized to summarize project activities and achieved results, and finally to get to know the Baltic Sea from the personal encounter.

“One thing is to talk about saving the sea that you have never seen with your own eyes, and a completely different - to commit yourself for improving something that you have personally experienced” – commented one of the Belarussian partners.

Baltic Sea. Photo: Nicholas Petroff.

 Text: Olena Zinchuk

Saving the Baltic Sea by Investing in the Waste Water Management in Belarus

Public Forum of PRESTO Final Conference entitled “Save the Sea – Investing in Waste Water Management in Belarus” took place in Helsinki on 11^th of February 2014. The event has gathered around 90 participants representing waste water treatment utilities, universities and research institutes, engineering and technology consultancy companies, as well as local, national and EU officials and representatives of the international organizations (UBC, HELCOM), water associations (European - EWA, German - DWA, Belarussian - Aqua-Bel and Finnish Water Forum) and financial institutions (NIB, NDEP/EBRD, NEFCO).

Topics discussed during the conference concentrated on the benefits and challenges of implementing the transnational investments in Belarus, presented practical examples of cooperation aiming at reducing the nutrient load in the Baltic Sea Region, and tried to look into the future of European water management sector.

Björn Grönholm, Head of the Sectretariat UBC EnvCom, explaining “How did we do it?” in PRESTO project

The overall objective of the event was to summarize the achievements of the project, disseminate its outcomes and share the knowledge developed throughout over the two years of its duration. PRESTO kicked off in November 2011, and since then the project activities have resulted in the phosphorous removal investments at three Belorussian WTTPs in Grodno, Molodechno and Vitebsk; laboratory, measurement and other analyzing equipment at the Baltic WTTPs Daugavpils and Kaunas; and capacity building cooperation between the Technical University of Berlin and three universities that prepare water management specialists in Belarus. 

Text and photos: Olena Zinchuk

 

PURE actions for Baltic Sea Protection -Reducing phosphorous load from municipal waste waters

Eutrophication is the major environmental problem of the Baltic Sea caused by overload of nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus. Symptoms of eutrophication include for example reduced water transparency and massive occurrences of harmful algae. Reduction of especially phosphorus load is urgently needed to improve the state of the Baltic Sea. Project PURE* tackled eutrophication: it enhanced phosphorus removal at selected municipal wastewater treatment plants in the Baltic Sea region. PURE project has ended and it’s time to shortly summarise the activities and accomplishments.

During PURE project implementation time, three project partner wastewater treatment plants were deleted from the HELCOM hot spots list. These were Kohtla Järve in Estonia and Pomorzany and Zdroje in Szczecin, Poland. Project partners from Riga and Jurmala, Latvia and from Brest, Belarus focused their activities on investing. Currently, Riga and Brest wastewater treatment plants have a functioning chemical phosphorus removal system and Jurmala wastewater treatment plant have equipment that helps to control the biological phosphorus removal. With chemical phosphorus removal, annually over 100 tons of phosphorus is removed from the wastewaters of Riga. In addition, even up to 141 tons of phosphorus can be precipitated from the untreated wastewater in Brest with the current equipment.

In general, municipal sludge was very interesting topic. Both technical details as well as legislative issues of disposal were vividly discussed. After the project, it seems that municipal sludge continues to be a hot topic all around the Baltic Sea. It seems that wastewater treatment plants can be old or new, but challenges occur anyway. One of the PURE project results that we are very proud of is the Book of "Good Practices in Sludge Management". It presents technical solutions used in municipal wastewater sludge handling including disposal processes. The book compares the results achievable by application of different techniques, explores relevant emerging technologies and legal limitations for the further sewage sludge use.

One of the PURE projects’ outputs is a new benchmarking service for municipalities and water companies. Service is called PURE Benchmark online database and it contains wastewater treatment information from 30 municipalities and 3100 wastewater treatment plants around the Baltic Sea region. The user-friendly and practical online tool was developed by local users for practical needs like reporting and anonymous benchmarking. The database monitors also the level of wastewater treatment and technology used in the region.

Project organised six events that gathered 246 individual experts together to exchange information and to discuss about advanced wastewater treatment in the Baltic Sea Region. Among event participants, 88 were personnel from different water utilities. On-line training materials concluding the topics of the PURE project events are available for the public. Materials among other things include information about municipal sludge handling, investments in enhanced phosphorous removal in municipal wastewater treatment plants and eutrophication process of the Baltic Sea.

In addition to the events, PURE communicated the best available practices of modern wastewater treatment and sludge management by disseminating project Newsletters, Book of Good practices on Sludge management and other publications to 248 different expert organisations. Main target audience was water utilities. National and international associations and networks, authorities and other organisations like financial institutions, private companies and foundations, media and universities were also contacted.

After the project has finished it is easy to say that we have been able to make a difference. On a policy level, PURE projects’ steering group had an opportunity to participate in reformulation of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. It was possible to underline the important role of the of municipal wastewater treatment plants when tangible actions against eutrophication are demanded. In addition HELCOM is currently considering new guidelines for municipal sludge treatment. Many of the people and organisations that we worked with during the past four years have been able to increase their knowledge about the many possibilities of modern wastewater treatment.  Currently, important work for better future continues as partners signed the statement: Next steps of PURE partners to promote advanced phosphorus removal and sustainable sludge management in the Baltic Sea region. Now it is your turn to give your input.

*Project on Urban Reduction of Eutrophication PURE (co-financed by the Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013)

The state of the Baltic Sea –Common concern of Russia and Finland

Picture: Hannamaria Yliruusi, UBC

Baltic Sea Forum 2013, organized in our secretariats home city Turku, gathered water experts and other stakeholders together to share experiences about water issues in Russia. The round table discussion included interesting presentations focusing mainly on co-operation between Russia and Finland. These two countries have a long history of joint activities in the water sector and active discussion showed that there is a great interest among Finnish professionals to co-operate with Russia also in the future. However, participants shared a concern about lack of interest of young professionals in Russia – Finland co-operation.

Water issues are high on the agenda in the Baltic Sea region and especially the state of the Sea is a hot topic. For example the Gulf of Finland suffers from mass algae blooms during summer time decreasing the attractiveness of the region and the poor water quality concerns greatly both Russia and Finland. Common worry has resulted in successful co-operation that started already during the 60s and 70s. In those days the co-operation was, according to the representative of the Finnish Ministry of Finland, Laura Saijonmaa, mainly research collaboration. One current example of joint actions, presented by Esa Ovaskainen from Ecovod Oy, was realization of advanced wastewater treatment in the city of St Petersburg. Objective of the city is that 98 % of the wastewaters are treated in accordance with Baltic Marine Environment Protection Committees (HELCOM) recommendations by 2015. During the debate, it was brought up that this target is already achieved.

When the audience asked from the speakers what has been the key to successful co-operation and to the decades long continuation of the fruitful work, almost all speakers highlighted the importance of trust. It appears that the starting of joint actions has been depended on the joint interests of specific individuals working in the water sector in both countries. Especially the co-operation between water utilities of Helsinki, Finland and St. Petersburg was brought up. The other success factor has been the will to build long term co-operation. It was mutual understanding that to be able to work together, it will take time to build up trust and to find common ground for implementation.

However participants shared a common concern about the continuation of joint efforts for better Baltic Sea. Individuals, who has been pushing co-operation for common goals are retiring in the near future and according to the experts, it seems that young professionals are not as interested in Finnish-Russian co-operation as the older generation has been. The lack of interest is unfortunate since it might be that the good relations and trust in water co-operation will stop when the individual contacts tied during the last 30 years cease to be.

Nevertheless we are now in a good position to make co-operation between Russia and Finland stronger and hopefully, at the same time, we are able to attract new organizations and young professionals to get involved. Currently the city of Turku and the city of St Petersburg are celebrating 60 years as twin cities and among other things future projects in the water field are planned and discussed. One of the events contributing to the celebrations is a seminar in Turku on Thursday 6.6.2013 called “Environmental and climate change strategies and policies in Baltic Region cities - From planning to implementation” held. In this seminar many policy areas, important equally to both cities, are discussed and one of those will definitely be water policies.

Experiencing innovations and new cooperation perspectives in water management at WASSER BERLIN INTERNATIONAL

Cooperation under the framework of international project PRESTO has accelerated recently. After successful Water Management Policy Forum organized in March 2013 in Minsk (Belarus), PRESTO partners visited “Wasser Berlin International” Congress and Trade Fair in Berlin (Germany) on 23 April 2013. This world-leading exhibition on innovative technology in water supply and treatment is attended biennially by 28 000 visitors and creates perfect platform for discussions with international experts on a variety of water-related topics. Congress helps specialists to improve their expertise, learn how other countries address water management challenges and provide networking opportunities in highly dynamic water market. Using this opportunity, PRESTO partners not only visited the Congress but also organised a Belarusian Country Forum open for external visitors.

Among invited speakers there was a representative of Ministry of Housing and Communal Services of the Republic of Belarus, Mr. Siarhei Tsimoshkin; Mr. Rüdiger Heidebrecht, Head of Department Training and International Cooperation from DWA - German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste and Mr. Bernd Zacharias, Head of Regional Section Russia of German Water Partnership.  

Speakers at the Forum: Siarhei Tsimoshkin, Rüdiger Heidebrecht, Vladimir Anoufriev, Bernd Zacharias; facilitation: Matthias Barjenbruch, Technical University of Berlin.
Photo by Agnieszka Ilola, UBC EnvCom.

  

Mr. Tsimoshkin in his speech highlighted the importance of public-private collaboration and stated that currently, based on a call from the Belarusian government, a new law on public-private partnerships is being developed, and that in the future it will foster investments in the water sector. Moreover, he admitted that the Ministry of Communal Services and Housing of Belarus is elaborating further ways of cooperation in reducing nutrient inputs to the Baltic Sea. For that the Ministry, together with the regional Departments of housing and communal services, searches for water and sewage utilities that directly affect the state of the Baltic Sea drainage area, to encourage their participation in the new projects with international investments for the advanced treatment technologies. ”It is evident that exchanging of experiences and knowledge in the projects like PRESTO can contribute to mutual understanding and accelerate the future cooperation process” Mr. Tsimoshkin said.

Mr. Rüdiger Heidebrecht, Head of Department Training and International Cooperation from DWA - German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (Hennef) presented international activities of DWA and invited PRESTO partners to collaboration with other leading European water alliances as IWA (International Water Association), EWA (European Water Association) or GWP (German Water Partnership).

After the Forum all partners had a chance to participate in the guided tour at the Trade Fair organized by the Technical University of Berlin and get familiar with the latest trends in pipeline engineering, water construction machinery, measuring and analysis technology and equipment.

For more information please visit our website at www.prestobalticsea.eu.

PRESTO partners visiting fair's stand of Grundfos, one of the world's leading pump manufacturers.
Photo by Agnieszka Ilola, UBC EnvCom.

Text by: Agnieszka Ilola, UBC EnvCom, Project Officer, PRESTO Project