Evaluation of technological wastewater treatment solutions for the settlements within the Backo Podunavlje biosphere reserve

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary analysis and the evaluation of a suitable technological solution for wastewater treatment for the villages Backi Breg and Kolut, belonging to the Backo Podunavlje Biosphere Reserve. The research was structured as a three part methodology. It encompassed: 1) citizens? habits on wastewater production - investigated by analysing septic tank waste water quality; 2) stakeholders? opinion on the most important features which a wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) has to fulfil-analysed by interviewing stakeholders and the application of multi-criteria decision support tool and 3) finding the most suitable location for future WWTF by applying geographic information systems (GIS). The results revealed that sampled wastewaters were in range for municipal wastewaters. The decision-making model, based on simple additive weighting (SAW), was defined to evaluate two possible solutions (constructed wetland and sequencing batch reactor) across six criteria. The model showed that a constructed wetland system is more adequate, in comparison to the sequencing batch reactor. Finally, by overlapping multiple GIS map layers the most suitable area for setting up the WWTF was found. The proposed methodology is especially suitable for application in biosphere reserves, since the link social attitude - natural resources exploitation - nature conservation is the key element for achieving sustainability.