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Water · Waste · Soil

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Last update: May 2011

Wastewater disposal from private households

General Information

The municipalities are responsible for wastewater disposal from private households. According to the latest statistical figures in 2007 over 96% of the total population of Germany were connected to the public sewage system: in other words, wastewater from households was collected in the public sewage system - there are around 540,723 km (2007) of sewers - and diverted to sewage treatment plants. There are almost 10,000 (2007) such plants.

To protect bodies of water from contamination, Section 57 para. 1 of the Federal Water Act (WHG) does not allow wastewater to be discharged unless the pollutant load in the wastewater is kept as low as possible using the best available techniques. The detailed specifications are included in the Wastewater Ordinance (AbwV). The new regulations came into force on 1 January 2005 with the revised Wastewater Ordinance. For a total of 53 industrial sectors, its annexes lay down requirements for discharging wastewater into bodies of water.

In 2007, a total of 10.07 billion m³ of wastewater was treated in public wastewater treatment plants - approx. 0.1% only mechanically, 2.3% biologically without targeted nutrient removal, and approx. 97.6% biologically with targeted nutrient removal.

In future the Wastewater Ordinance is to take account of cross-media aspects. In other words, it will undertake a context-based assessment of the interfaces with waste, air and soil. With the transposition of the IPPC Directive (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) into national law, the best available techniques are laid down as the basis for the integrated approach in all environmental legislation. In future the requirements of the Wastewater Ordinance for wastewater discharges are therefore to be keyed more closely to the best available techniques across environmental media. For wastewater this means the entire wastewater management chain (substance inputs, avoidance measures, sewage system, sewage works) and the interfaces with the other media.

Supply of Drinking Water / Discharge of Wastewater

Supplying drinking water to buildings also requires facilities for collecting and disposing of wastewater. There are provisions for the construction of houses to ensure the proper discharge of wastewater into the public sewerage system. These provisions include odour traps on every drain in a household to make it impossible for odours or pathogenic organisms to come back into the household from the wastewater.