The landscape for sewage treatment companies is very different from the drinking water companies as seen in the image above (some overlap can be found). This patch work has grown historically with all the issues connected to this (read more below). To mitigate the existing issues a considerable amount of consolidation is required in trend with their drinking water counterparts.
Processing of sewage water:
Mechanical purification: crude waste is removed from the water (leaves, sand, paper, …).
Biological purification: biological degradable materials are removed from the water (nitrogen and phosphorus).
Post-purification: slit sinks to the bottom which causes the creation of an upper layer of purified water. This purified water is sent to the Flemish waterways.
Aquafin and its role?
In Flanders, drinking water companies have a sanitation obligation for the drinking water they supply to end-users. They must ensure that this water is also purified after use before it is discharged back into nature. To fulfill this sanitation obligation, drinking water companies have an agreement with Aquafin, which is compensated by them for this purification. The fee for sewage treatment is passed on to consumers by the drinking water companies through the water bill. In addition to this supra-municipal sanitation fee, there is also a municipal sanitation fee for the construction and maintenance of the municipal sewage infrastructure.
In the past, drinking water companies themselves set up a 'sewerage branch' so that they, like Aquafin, became active in the municipal sewerage management market.
However, the practice proved to be inefficient. Because in this way, all those parties must develop and safeguard the same knowledge, while Aquafin has so much knowledge and experience from its supra-municipal mission.
Moreover, municipal and supra-municipal projects are often intertwined, and there is no 'hard' dividing line between the 2 systems. Furthermore, they impact each other. That is why Aquafin advocated for a more integrated sewerage management, which is also confirmed in the new cooperation agreement with the Flemish Region by the role of matchmaker assigned to Aquafin.
Expanding the network, Riopact:
For the Flemish Region, Aquafin builds and optimizes the supra-municipal infrastructure necessary for this. Cities and municipalities can also rely on Aquafin for this. More than one in three local authorities collaborate with Aquafin for municipal sewage management. They do this either directly or through collaboration with drinking water companies water-link, Pidpa, and De Watergroep (Riopact). Given the strength of collaboration with a drinking water company, Aquafin will henceforth only approach cities and municipalities within such collaboration.
Professional support can be provided in multiple ways. This can include:
