Abstract
Wastewater treatment plants are major interface between rural and urban activities and the natural environment with problems relating to the survival and transmission of the fecal bacteria into streams and rivers. The main goal of this paper was to showed the impact of WWTPs on fecal populations bacteria and their dissemination into the aquatic ecosystems. The sampling campaigns were conducted in 2019 where the hospital and WWTPs wastewater from three cities from the south-eastern part of Romania and the surface water of their emissaries were trimestral collected. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of total and fecal coliforms indicated the efficiency of wastewater treatment processes but at the same time, the contribution of contamination with hospital effluents has been demonstrated. Also, the microbiological results showed the selectivity of the destruction of fecal coliform bacteria between wastewater and surface water.
Highlights
The water cycle from catchment to discharge is a sector that involves important investments, operation and maintenance costs
The Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) were designed to process a large volume of wastewaters from the unitary sewage system of each city including from the hospitals
It can be observed that out of total coliform bacteria a proportion greater than 50% was represented by fecal coliform bacteria (Figure 1)
Summary
The water cycle from catchment to discharge is a sector that involves important investments, operation and maintenance costs. The EU (European Union) Directive 91/271/EEC sets the requirements that all urban areas must have wastewater treatment infrastructures to reduce the environmental impact of treated wastewater in water bodies. Wastewater treatment plants are major interface between rural and urban activities and the natural environment, but the studies are based in particular on the elimination of chemical pollutants and less on microbiological contamination. The control of fecal pollution sources is a reliable action to understand the outcome of microorganisms with potential health impact in most ecosystems. Organisms in this type of pollution are potentially pathogenic or pathogenic bacteria with gastro-intestinal habitat that can trigger infectious processes in the human body [2, 3]
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