At music festivals in the Netherlands, the wastewater is often full of medicine residues. A water association has now warned that sewage treatment plants are not designed to filter drug residues from water.
Some of it is removed, but the majority flows into water bodies with the purified water. This has negative consequences for fish and plants, the board of Dommel water association, Bas Peters, told the Eindhovens Dagblad on Thursday. The medicine residues even end up in drinking water production via the Meuse, including in the greater Rotterdam region (second largest city in the Netherlands, note).
Currently, more and more chemicals, medicine residues and microplastics end up in wastewater. The association invests a lot in appropriate technology to remove as many of these substances as possible. 14 million euros alone went to an ozone system that can filter medicine residues. However, this system is not suitable for removing medicine residues, according to Peters. People cannot be told to invest in separate technology for the festival season.
The association sees organizers as having a duty
The costs cannot be passed on to the residents of a region, but must be borne by the festival organizers. These must also ensure that pharmaceutical residues are filtered from the wastewater on site before they end up in the sewer via mobile toilets.
Source: Krone
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