Reuse of treated wastewater: case of Bonifacio and Spérone wastewater treatment plants

In a context of integrated management of water resources, WASP is of increasing interest to local authorities, particularly coastal authorities that have a duty to protect natural environments. The case of the city of Bonifacio is a beautiful illustration of the mobilization of a municipality for a more sustainable development of their place of life and their infrastructures in compliance with the regulations.
In 2015, the reuse of treated wastewater from the Bonifacio and Spérone stations (REUT) to irrigate the grounds of the Sperone golf course located on a rocky spur of the commune is being considered. Indeed, the watering of the golf course competes with the water needs necessary for the development of the city and agricultural uses, in a region with a strong rainfall deficit.

This LWR project, supported by the department and the Rhone-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency, has a non-negligible environmental impact that is fully in line with the municipality’s desire to save its water resources.
The municipality wishes to improve and enhance the quality of the water from its wastewater treatment plant while reducing discharges. A non-negligible asset in terms of circular economy and sustainable development.

For the Bonifacio water treatment plant equipment project, the distance between the WWTP and the golf course implied the installation of an ultraviolet water treatment system to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms. This technology ensures the bacteriological quality necessary for a sprinkler irrigation system (irrigation that sprays water into the air through sprinklers or nozzles to make it fall on the surface of the ground in the form of fine water drops).
In fact, inhalation during the sprinkling of water that would accidentally be of degraded bacteriological quality can be harmful to health. The use of WASTE water for golf course irrigation therefore requires special precautions to be taken in the treatment of wastewater.

WASTE is a very promising approach, but it is not as trivial as it may seem, as it is often subject to environmental and sanitary regulations as well as instruction procedures under the law on water, public health and classified sites.<br/>The challenge was therefore considerable: to guarantee a quality of treatment in class A, i.e. the strictest standard, which requires a reduction of 4 logs (i.e. 99.99% effective disinfection over the entire water treatment process)

Specialist in UV water treatment for more than 20 years, BIO-UV Group has carried out two joint projects to connect the Bonifacio water treatment plant to the Spérone golf course.

The choice of devices allowing an efficient and immediate disinfection allows to guarantee the bacteriological abatement of 4 LOG required for this project. This concerns bacteria such as intestinal enterococci (causing septicemia, urinary or abdominal infections among others), f-specific RNA phages, bacterial viruses, (Escherichia coli and Salmonella for example) and spores of sulfite-reducing anaerobic bacteria.

BIO-UV Group has therefore succeeded in the mission to equip the Golf of Spérone with UV systems in order to allow the irrigation of the Golf while preserving the available water resource for the population.