Waste Water Treatment in Akureyri

First results

First results (PDF)

The City of Akureyri has an output of wastewater that is comparable to a town that is twice as large. This is due to industrial activities but also an high private use of water, which is a general phenomenon in Iceland. This problem is exacerbated by the arrival of 200.000 tourists per year.

Historically, wastewater was pumped directly into Eyjafjörður without treatment. Over the last 7 years, Norðurorka has implemented collection of wastewater, implemented pumping stations, and started monitoring water quality. In the summer of 2020, a preliminary treatment facility was added that filters out everything that is larger than 3mm.
While this is an improvement, unfortunately preliminary treatment alone does not remove potentially harmful substances like disease-causing fecal bacteria, chemicals, microplastics, or heavy metals.

Most places in Europe use secondary and/or tertiary wastewater treatment to decrease the burden on the environment – not so Iceland:

Report to the EFTA Surveillance Authority regarding the implementation of Directive 91/271/EU on the treatment of wastewater from agglomerations.

In Iceland, we are still working on implementing preliminary treatment for all municipalities, to filter out large items like wet wipes and other rubbish. While the natural environment has some capacity to remove certain pollutants, others can be particularly problematic as they do not easily break down and can pose a risk to wildlife, including fish, whales, and birds, as well as the marine and coastal habitats themselves. Therefore, it is very important that we are all aware that everything we flush down the toilet, every chemical we use for cleaning and washing, will end up in the sea.

The survey of which we present here first results is a student-initiated project at the University of Akureyri, within the green flag project, and is part of the activities of the environmental council of the University of Akureyri.
The survey was released in January 2022 from the Environmental Council of the University of Akureyri. Since then, 333 participants have responded to it. The survey was advertised via social media and via word-by-mouth.

THE RESULTS SHOW THAT:

• 80,5% of the participants consider wastewater treatment as very important
• 62% of participants did not know that the sewage plant in Akureyri conducts filtering
• 69% were not aware of the low sewage treatment standards based on Icelandic law
• 90% of the participants think that the Icelandic law should be changed
• 96% of participants would like to improve the current wastewater treatment in Akureyri
• The most common answer of why sewage treatment is important was “protecting the environment” followed by “protecting our health”
• Participants are willing to contribute with actions like: “Not throwing wet wipes, floss and other rubbish into the toilet”, “Throw left-overs from the kitchen into the organic waste instead of into the toilet” or “Collect and return paint and other chemicals instead of pouring them into the sink” among others
• We are aware that the improvement of the wastewater treatment plant would need a great investment. Therefore, we asked the participants how much they will be willing to pay for it. 1000-3000 ISK/month was the most common answer
• We were surprised by the high percentage of participants that also submitted a comment in the free-text part of the survey. The majority of the comments were demanding better sewage treatment and lots of them expressed their surprise and concern about the low standards of wastewater treatment in Akureyri
• Finally, we also asked a few questions to characterize the participants. A dominance of female participants is probably explained by the in general higher availability of women to participate in surveys, but may also reflect a greater interest among women in this topic. 199 women and 127 men participated.