Lielupe River Basin

In the Lielupe River Basin, located in Latvia and Lithuania, NENUPHAR project partners are busy working on a demo case testing new technology to improve the composting of sewage sludge. Those working on this demo case will not only compost the sewage sludge being tested, but also apply it to fields, monitoring its effects throughout the process.   

With ecosystems threatened by nutrient pollution from wastewater and at the same time record fertiliser costs for farmers, extracting nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage sludge and composting it as fertiliser is one obvious solution to both problems. Done right, this will allow competitively priced nutrient supply, while at the same time ensuring cleaner soil, air and water – in short, a healthier and safer environment. 

The key stakeholders involved in this demo case are wastewater treatment plant operators and municipalities (the sewage sludge producers) and farmers (the end-users of this product in the form of fertilisers for their crops).  

The ultimate objective of this demo case is for it to be replicated elsewhere at scale. The methodology for this process has therefore been developed with that goal in mind, involving a number of rigorous tests of the sewage sludge, its compost, as well as the agricultural soils treated with this product, to ensure it is usable, applicable and effective elsewhere.