Organised by Ecofilae, the European project FIT4REUSE, which aims to provide safe, locally sustainable and accepted ways of water supply for the Mediterranean agricultural sector by exploiting non-convetional water resources, namely treated wastewater and desalinated water, held its technical meeting on 18th and 19th February 2020 in Montpellier, France. The meeting brought together project’s partners Ecofilae, UNIBO, BIOAZUL S.L. and ISSBAT to discuss the implementation of WP6 ‘Use of non-conventional water resources’ and WP7 ‘Holistic assessment of the environmental, economic and social impacts of unconventional water resources treatment and application’.
The Mediterranean basin is currently characterised as a region with limited and irregular availability of water resources. Agricultural sector is considered as the major water demanding user which accounts for more than 80% of the total consumption in the region. While population growth and climate change related events are expected to increase the water scarcity even more, around 28 billion m3 year-1 of urban/domestic wastewater are produced and discharged – treated or untreated – every year into water bodies in the same region.
To tackle these challenges, FIT4REUSE project aims to develop innovative tailored combinations of nature-based and intensive technologies for treating wastewater and desalinated water, thus providing for regular water supply suitable for irrigational purposes and aquifer recharge, while reducing at the same time the amount of wastewater discharged into water bodies.
Overall FIT4REUSE concept for enhancing the reuse of reclaimed water in the Mediterranean agricultural sector, is based on three pillars: (i) the development and optimisation of treatment technologies, (ii) the application of recycled water resources on irrigation and aquifer recharge and (iii) the performance of a holistic assessment of use of non-conventional water resources, identifying barriers and drivers for increasing the public acceptance and market deployment. Thus, the project will provide completed solutions for safe water reuse that fit to local needs and different scenarios, promoting the concept of the circular economy in Mediterrenean and beyond.
Towards these goals, future activities of the project were discussed in the technical meeting in Montpellier, regarding the employment of novel practices for irrigating crops using non-conventional water resources in the context of WP6. This work package aims to provide guidelines to practitioners and farmers for irrigation and aquifer recharge, establishing sustainable irrigation and agronomic practices to ensure control of sanitary, environmental and agronomic risks. Furthermore, it will develop guidelines to develop Water Reuse Safety (Risk Management) Plans in Mediterranean countries for enhancing the safe reuse of alternative water streams. In addition, the meeting also focused on WP7, whose objective is the assessment of the sustainability of diverse unconventional water resources systems with respect to the factors driving community opposition to unconventional water resources application.
FIT4REUSE project has started on 1st July 2019 with a total budget of 2.02 million euros for a period of 36 months and is supported by the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA), funded under Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework for Research and Innovation. The project consists of 9 partners from 7 Mediterranean countries. FIT4REUSE technologies will be demonstrated at three demonstration sites in Italy, Greece and Tunisia.
