The Italy-Croatia Cross Border Cooperation (CBC) Programme is the financial instrument supporting the cooperation between the two European Member States overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The first call for proposals was launched in 2017, identifying four priority axes of intervention. Subsequently, in 2019, the kick-off of the AdSWiM project “Managed use of treated urban wastewater for the quality of the Adriatic Sea” took place in Udine (IT). Adriatic marine waters are generally classified as good to excellent based on the Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC). Nevertheless, issues of low productivity or the lack of nutrients have been often suggested, especially on the Italian side. The project addresses the question of whether wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) discharging to the sea, after applying appropriate pollution control and management technologies, can modulate the nutrient content of their effluents to support localized depleted areas. This idea is borrowed from one of the motivations that support the reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation, thus leading to the return of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.) to natural biogeochemical cycles. However, the hypothesis of modulating the nutrient composition of wastewater opens up to several critical aspects, including legislative and technological ones. Being aware of the delicate environmental implications, we have undertaken the project involving WWTPs, research centers, municipalities, and legal experts with the aim of investigating in detail the problems related to wastewater reuse, especially with regard to the content of nutrients. Our experimental approach aimed to evaluate appropriate and possibly new treatment technologies to reduce the microbial load and to implement chemical and microbiological tests on the treated wastewater. Results have shown that it can be tricky to draw decisive conclusions because (i) the wastewater management systems differ between the two sides of the Adriatic sea due to the different levels of technological development of WWTPs; (ii) the Italian and Croatian coasts deeply differ in geographic characteristics (i.e., topography, orography, current circuits, presence of rivers) and anthropogenic pressure (i.e., exploitation levels, population density); (iii) the new treatment technologies to lower bacterial contamination need further efforts to raise their technological level of readiness (TRL) and make them implementable in the existing WWTPs. However, in terms of chemical control methodologies, the proposed sensors and biosensors gave positive results, managing to decrease the detection limits for the measured parameters, and the tested technologies for microbiological monitoring were also effective. In particular, the latter was carried out by using recent molecular biology techniques, capable of resolving the microbiota in treated wastewater, which emerged to be strictly related to the features of the WWTPs.

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Interreg 项目 AdSWiM：处理后废水的管理使用以提高亚得里亚海的质量

意大利-克罗地亚跨境合作 (CBC) 计划是支持俯瞰亚得里亚海的两个欧洲成员国之间合作的金融工具。第一次提案征集于 2017 年启动，确定了四个优先干预轴。随后，在 2019 年，AdSWiM 项目“管理使用经过处理的城市废水以提高亚得里亚海的质量”在乌迪内 (IT) 启动。根据沐浴水指令 (2006/7/EC)，亚得里亚海水域通常被归类为良好至极好。然而，生产力低下或缺乏营养的问题经常被提出，尤其是在意大利方面。该项目解决了污水处理厂 (WWTP) 是否排放到海中的问题，在应用适当的污染控制和管理技术后，可以调节其流出物中的营养成分以支持局部枯竭地区。这个想法是从支持将处理过的废水再用于灌溉的动机之一借用的，从而导致营养物质（氮、磷、钾等）返回自然生物地球化学循环。然而，调节废水营养成分的假设涉及几个关键方面，包括立法和技术方面。意识到微妙的环境影响，我们开展了涉及污水处理厂、研究中心、市政当局和法律专家的项目，旨在详细调查与废水再利用相关的问题，特别是在营养成分方面。我们的实验方法旨在评估适当的和可能的新处理技术，以减少微生物负荷，并对处理后的废水进行化学和微生物测试。结果表明，很难得出决定性的结论，因为 (i) 由于污水处理厂的技术发展水平不同，亚得里亚海两岸的废水管理系统存在差异；(ii) 意大利和克罗地亚海岸在地理特征（即地形、地形、电流回路、河流的存在）和人为压力（即开发水平、人口密度）方面存在很大差异；(iii) 降低细菌污染的新处理技术需要进一步努力提高其技术准备水平 (TRL) 并使其可在现有 WWTP 中实施。然而，在化学控制方法方面，所提出的传感器和生物传感器给出了积极的结果，设法降低了测量参数的检测限，并且微生物监测的测试技术也很有效。特别是后者是利用最近的分子生物学技术进行的，能够解析处理过的废水中的微生物群，这与污水处理厂的特点密切相关。