What about discharge standards and the water bill?
If, as a Flemish company, you discharge your industrial wastewater untreated into the sewerage system, you have to pay an annual charge for this. This is a levy for the sanitation of the waste water by the municipal wastewater treatment. Since the levy year 2017, this levy has been charged in full via the integral drinking water invoice, in the form of a supra-municipal sanitation contribution, and covers a substantial part of the total drinking water invoice.
Do I need to install my own wastewater treatment plant?
In many cases, however, it is interesting to install your own wastewater treatment plant. The annual costs of self-purification are significantly lower than when untreated wastewater is discharged into the sewer system. If you have your own wastewater treatment plant, the supra-municipal sanitation contribution will be forfeited. If you also disconnect from the sewerage system and discharge purified water into surface water, for example, the municipal remediation contribution will also be deducted from the integral drinking water bill. This is a contribution to the disposal and collection of wastewater.
Own wastewater treatment can always be considered if one has easily degradable wastewater at one’s disposal, as is usually the case in the food and beverage sector. Depending on a number of parameters, including the daily volume and degree of pollution of the wastewater, the purchase of an own treatment plant can be recouped within 2 to 8 years.
