Feasibility assessment of reclaimed wastewater reuse in agriculture: how we do it

The growing interest towards wastewater (WW) reuse as alternative irrigation source is raised by the worldwide concern on water shortages and enhanced by the new European Directive on water reuse minimum requirements. In this perspective, water utilities and decision makers would benefit from a methodology to evaluate and encourage safe and efficient agricultural WW reuse practices. In this work, we propose a novel approach to identify criteria for assessing and prioritizing WW treatment plants (WWTPs) suitability for WW reuse practices implementation. The developed methodology, coupling WWTPs’ characteristics (i.e., flowrate and effluent quality) and features of the local territory (i.e., cultivated crops and climate), is able to quantify the economic savings, in terms of water and nutrients, and avoided environmental impacts, that could be fulfilled from WW reuse, and which WWTPs and territories to prioritize in its implementation.