Towards Sustainable Treatment and Reuse of Wastewater in the Mediterranean Region

AQUACYCLE invites water stakeholders to join Final Conference

The AQUACYCLE Final Conference will be hosted by the Lebanese University at the Chamber of Commerce of Tripoli, Lebanon during 23-24 June 2023, under the patronage and presence of the Honourable Dr. Nasser Yassin, Minister of Environment in Lebanon.

The event is being organized as a hybrid event, enabling participation in person or online. Participation is free of charge, but prior registration is mandatory, which can be accessed through this link. All those registering their their presence will be online, will be receiving the link to join the event.

Following on welcome addresses, the event will kick-start with keynote presentations on the topic of wastewater treatment in Lebanon. The latter will be followed by a presentation on the pilot demonstration unit of AQUACYCLE’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system in Deddeh Koura, North Lebanon.

Next on the agenda are presentations on one of AQUACYCLE’s foremost legacies in the form of a Charter which brings the ‘voices’ of water stakeholders from around the Mediterranean who actively participated in one or several of the AQUACYCLE’s stakeholder engagement activities that were organized over the four-year duration of the project.

This first day of the Final Conference will be concluded with two Roundtables on the topics of, respectively, testimonies on the treatment of municipal wastewater in Lebanon, and experiences from wastewater related research projects in Lebanon.

The programme for the second day, i.e. on June 24th 2023, will take a look back at some of the main achievements of the AQUACYCLE project, starting from the design and functionality of an online Irrigation Support Tool. Moreover, the event will create the opportunity to demonstrate how local communities can be meaningfully involved in the drawing up of action plans for the reuse of treated effluent.

In addition to the sharing of the results of the analyses of the treated effluent obtained at the pilot demonstration unit installed at Blanca, Spain, also the outcomes of various laboratory-scale studies on the optimization of the system’s individual treatment components (i.e. anaerobic digestion, constructed wetlands and solar disinfection) in Tunisia will be presented. Finally, the outcomes of a survey conducted in Lebanon to collect society’s viewpoints on the reuse of treated effluent will be shared as well.

Preceding the Final Conference programme, a field excursion is planned on 22nd June 2023, during which the AQUACYCLE partnership will be visiting the waste water stations in Koubayat near Akkar Al-Atika as well as the station that is under construction in Akkar Al-Atika itself.