Abstract:The application of innovative technologies in water management, such as wastewater reuse, requires a deeper understanding of emerging pollutants, including pharmaceuticals. This study presents a unique pilot site at Horní Beřkovice in Central Bohemia, where wastewater parameters are significantly influenced by the effluent from a local psychiatric hospital, and where the treated wastewater infiltrates into a shallow aquifer over a long period. The survey compared the quality parameters of local wastewater with those of the wastewater in four other catchments with no sources of concentrated pharmaceutical contamination. A total of 10 pharmaceuticals were detected while monitoring a common sewage system, but their number increased 3-fold at Horní Beřkovice. The water quality data revealed the effectiveness of the removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater at the local sewage treatment plant and tracked the fate of substances that move from the treatment plant into the recharge ponds and then gradually into groundwater. The findings showed a significant decrease in all the monitored micropollutants that remained bound in sediments and in the unsaturated zone. Their passage into groundwater was highly reduced, and they virtually disappear after a few hundred meters in the saturated zone. The only exception is carbamazepine. This substance passes through the treatment technology and unsaturated zone. It systematically appears in the groundwater samples collected about 1 km from the infiltration site.

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The Káraný waterworks supplies drinking water to about one-third of Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic with a population of more than 1 million. The combination of two technologies—bank infiltration and artificial recharge—are used for production of drinking water. The two-year monitoring of PPCPs (pharmaceuticals and personal care products) at monthly intervals observed temporal changes in 81 substances in the source river and groundwater, and the efficacy of contamination removal depended on the treatment technology used. The results showed a very wide range of PPCPs discharged from the waste water treatment plant at Mladá Boleslav into the Jizera River at concentrations ranging from ng/L to μg/L. Acesulfame and oxypurinol in concentrations exceeding 100 ng/L systematically occurred, and then a few tens of ng/L of carbamazepine, sulfamethoxazole, primidone, and lamotrigine were regularly detected at the water outlet using the artificial recharge for production of drinking water. Bank infiltration was found more efficient in removing PPCP substances at the Káraný locality where none of the monitored substances was systematically detected in the mixed sample.

The fast development of laboratory methods has revealed increased amounts of trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) in waste waters in the Czech Republic. This paper focuses on the expected costs to solve this problem by quaternary treatment of waste water based on activated carbon filtration. The one‐time investment costs in 155 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with a capacity of over 10 000 population equivalent (PE) would represent an amount of around 300 million EUR. The increase in end‐user operating costs would be 0.4 EUR/m3, which would mean a 15% increase in water and sewage costs. A sociological survey showed that most respondents (65%) would agree with an increase in price but only by 10%. Currently the cost of the quaternary treatment of wastewater is based primarily on estimates. Therefore changes in legislation leading to stricter limits and an increase in the efficiency of wastewater treatment should be preceded by additional applied research.