Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive

Directive 91/271/EEC of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment. It concerns the collection, treatment and discharge of urban waste water and the treatment and discharge of waste water from certain industrial sectors. Its purpose is to protect the environment against the adverse effects of the above-mentioned wastewater discharges. For this purpose, it defines the obligations of local authorities regarding the collecting and treatment of urban waste water and the terms and procedures for agglomerations with more than 2,000 population equivalents. The municipalities involved must, in particular,: draft sanitation programmes determining areas with collective sewerage and those with on-site sanitation (non-collective); prepare a sanitation programme based on the objective of pollutant flow reduction set by prefectural order for each agglomeration previously delimited by a prefectural order; build the equipment needed at certain deadlines. This directive was transcribed into French law by the Decree of 3 January 1994.