EVENTS NEWS
Municipalities: core target group for the environmental industry
Municipalities are among the most important users of the products and processes presented at the IFAT Munich 2024 environmental technology trade fair. New challenges, opportunities and solutions also create a great need for information and discussion for cities and municipalities.
From May 13 to 17, 2024, IFAT Munich will bring the global environmental technology industry together again in one place. The exhibitors at the Munich exhibition center will then once again present their latest products, processes and services from the fields of water and wastewater, waste and raw materials management to the specialist audience. For many of them, cities and municipalities, with their wide range of environmentally relevant tasks, are part of their key customer base. Municipalities, for example, face the permanent challenge of ensuring the quantity and quality of the drinking water supply, maintaining infrastructural values, and averting potential risks to society and the environment—all at a reasonable cost. In line with that, the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water (DVGW) is offering three solution tours at the world’s leading trade fair in Munich
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entitled “Innovative technologies for assessing the condition of buried pipelines,” “Protection of critical infrastructure in drinking water supply,” and “Increased water temperature in the distribution network.” At the association’s stand, keynote speeches will first explain the respective problem before guided tours lead participants to corresponding exhibitor solutions.
New PFAS limit values affect treatment requirements
The revised Drinking Water Ordinance came into force in Germany in June 2023. It implements significant elements of the EU Drinking Water Directive from 2020. Among the new and amended limit values, the toxicologically relevant per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS for short, clearly play the most important role. Water suppliers may have to filter out PFAS with considerable technical effort. “However, end-of-pipe approaches are not a solution. The production and use of PFAS must be limited to a few essential purposes. The aim must be to already avoid these substances at the pollution source. These substances must not be released into the environment in the first place,” says Wolf Merkel, DVGW Board Member for Water. The association
| February 2024 |
www.draintraderltd.com
is taking this as an opportunity to present new technological approaches to the treatment of water containing PFAS at IFAT Munich as part of its “TechLIFT” event format, and to discuss them with a panel of experts.
“The list of challenges facing local authorities in the wastewater sector is also long,” as Dr. Friedrich Hetzel stresses. As examples, the head of the Water and Waste Management Department at the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) cites the separation of phosphorus from wastewater and sewage sludge, the lower limit values for nutrients such as phosphorus in the effluent of wastewater treatment plants expected as a result of the amendment to the EU Urban Wastewater Directive, the removal of trace substances from the water cycle, and combined sewer overflows.
For a water-conscious, resilient municipality
Driven by the consequences of climate change, he also believes that water- conscious urban development should be high up on the municipal agenda. “A central aspect here is the intelligent handling of rainwater, especially in the context of extreme events. What is
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