Societal benefits of urban water systems

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Watch the recording of the ANCHOR lunch talk about societal benefits of urban water systems here, and consult the slides here.

Project partner KWR (Fabi van Berkel, Public Design and Value researcher) presented “Novel value perspectives on evaluating urban wastewater systems”. The ANCHOR project will carry out a value mapping exercise to include more aspects than the financial perspective only. Fabi presented a number of concepts that are useful in value mapping, such as: 

• NEXUS thinking: water, food and energy are interconnected
• Industrial Ecology thinking: seeing the world as a socio-technical process
• Circular Economy: business model to improve resource efficiency

It was highlighted here that different pilot sites are also prompted by different drivers. Fabi will map the development trajectory in the ANCHOR pilot sites towards the actual outcomes (the values), and then map the multiple value dynamics in each pilot site. This will lead to insights that can be useful both within the pilot sites and for future urban water systems.

The city of Ghent (Elisabeth Kuijken, department environment and climate) and DuCoop (circular cooperative) told the history behind De Nieuwe Dokken in Ghent – a former harbour area that was developed into a sustainable city district. How did this project take root? The spatial development plan was in place in 2011, and soil remediation was needed due to pollution.  The city put up sustainability criteria to be met by developers (20% of the assessment value) and used an instrument called the Sustainability Meter to evaluate the tenders, a Ghent instrument inspired by e.g. BREEAM (but without certification), focusing on results rather than solutions only in terms of energy, water, green spaces… This forced the sector to think innovatively about service delivery for De Nieuwe Dokken. Ghent created a safe space for innovation and future-proof solutions. To support this, the city provided the legal framework to allow for agreements to ensure for long-term services. The Flemish government has since taken over the Sustainability Meter and improved it, which forecasts that more cities will develop local energy and water communities.

The tenders had to score at least 70% on overall sustainability, and preferably higher. Specific demands on energy performance were included in the tender but not any on wastewater management yet. The highest scoring candidate on sustainability was DuCoop, and they won the contract on a 93.9% sustainability score, including the source-separating wastewater system for resource recovery. The Sustainability Meter is now still used for annual follow-up. The city is also working on including ZAWENT, the innovative wastewater and energy concept in De Nieuwe Dokken, in their local regulations and permits. 

Lessons learned from this Ghent development:

• Public ownership of the terrain allows to set high sustainability criteria for development
• The Sustainability Meter is an appropriate tool for larger development projects, for assessment and discussion – no certification is needed
• Long projects mean that the Sustainability Meter cannot have criteria that are too specific
• You have to strike a balance between the innovative way forward and long-term functioning of trusted solutions.
• Delays are particularly hard for private investors since they affect the business case, but can be countered by solutions of design. For instance, if you want to organize local water and energy communities, it is important to think about how to do so in a financially sustainable way since benefits created by a project do not always come back to the project immediately. For instance if a local water and energy community can delay/avoid the extension of a centralized WWTP this saves costs, which do not come back to the project.
  

Elisabeth Kvarnström, consultant to Stockholm city, presented an analysis that compared three wastewater system alternatives to the reference option: an existing wastewater treatment plant in Stockholm with tertiary treatment. 

1. Wastewater system 1:  reference option + membrane bioreactors (on-going redevelopment)
2. Wastewater system 2:  like wastewater system1 + micropollutant removal, N and P recovery
3. Wastewater system 3: source-separating wastewater system with separate collection and treatment of blackwater and greywater.

The highest benefits were found with wastewater system 3. The highest monetized benefit was better sanitization, i.e. keeping pathogens from the recipient. However, costs were also highest with wastewater system 3. Important to remember, though, is that the costs for wastewater system 3 did not benefit from the economies of scale that the wastewater system 2 and 1 had (costs for around 1 million PE downscaled to 9,800 pe in the city district). Wastewater system 3 covered most of its costs (85%) whereas system 1 and 2 covered 70% and 66% of their costs respectively. The conclusion from the economists who made the study was that investments in innovative and new technologies can lead to several benefits. The benefits even reach the extent to which new alternatives can economically compete with the conventional ones despite higher investment costs.

Want to stay up to speed about the whereabouts of the ANCHOR project? Sign up here to receive news updates (2/year) and invitations to lunch talks (4/year).

🚀 The next lunch talk is hosted on September 23rd at noon and will discuss the collection and treatment of blackwater. Register here!

For any questions about this article you can reach out to the author, Elisabeth Kvarnström (Ecoloop, working with Stockholm Stad, SE).