Modelling of bacterial removal in wastewater storage reservoir for irrigation purposes: a case study in Sicily, Italy

In arid and semiarid regions the reclamation and reuse of municipal wastewater can play a strategic role in alleviating water resources shortages. Public awareness is growing about the need to recycle and reuse water for increasing supply availability. Many wastewater reuse projects have been put in operation in European and Mediterranean countries adopting extensive treatment systems such as aquifer recharge, lagooning, constructed wetlands, and storage reservoirs, mainly for landscape and agricultural irrigation. In agricultural reuse systems, there is an increasing interest in extensive technologies because of their high reliability, and easy and low cost operation and maintenance. Wastewater storage reservoirs have become the option selected in many countries because of the advantages they present in comparison with other treatment alternatives, namely the coupling of two purposes, stabilization and seasonal regulation. This paper describes an example of a wastewater storage system, built in Caltagirone (Sicily, Italy). The storage results in a tertiary treatment of a continuous inlet flow of activated sludge effluents. The prediction of the microbiological water quality has been evaluated by means of a non-steady-state first-order kinetic model. Single and multiple regressions were applied to determine the main variables that most significantly affected die-off coefficients. The proposed model has been calibrated using the results of a field monitoring carried out during a period from March to October 2000.