The Australian Wastewater Quality Management Guidelines 2022 are a framework for effectively managing wastewater to a wastewater system from its source, through its collection, transfer, and treatment, to its disposal or reuse.
By following the guidelines, utilities will better manage loads and concentrations of inputs into the wastewater system and achieve other benefits as well. The purpose of this project was to refresh the 2012 Australian Sewage Quality Management Guidelines.
These guidelines follow a similar evidentiary framework to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines and Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling, however the similarities stop there. The Wastewater Quality Guidelines acknowledge that there are relatively few opportunities to manage the wastewater product by introducing critical control points, rather the emphasis must be on the short- and long-term evaluation of wastewater quality data so you understand the product and make decisions on it resource value. In many cases it will mean that almost identical networks will be managed in completely different ways.
With a growing emphasis on the Circular Economy and the use of wastewater as a source of purified recycle water it is important that we understand the source product very well.