An innovative risk assessment framework for water reuse: The case study of Corleone (Italy)

Water reuse practices still need to be consistently implemented across Europe and globally, primarily due to insufficient social trust and the complexities of governance surrounding water reuse techniques. Additionally, the need for uniformity in water reuse regulations is a significant factor. To address these challenges, the European Parliament recently published Regulation 2020/741, which establishes minimum requirements for water reuse to standardise legal obligations for reclaimed wastewater. This Regulation also mandates the development of Water Reuse Risk Management Plans (WRRMPs) for all Union reclamation facilities. In view of simplifying the risks (both environmental and health) management, this manuscript has the novelty of proposing a new framework based on a semi-quantitative approach. The new framework allows for assessing health and environmental risks according to the EU Regulation 2020/741. The proposed framework, for the first time, connects the severity of risk with water quality. The framework was applied to the case study of Corleone (Sicily, Italy), which considered Class A water according to 2020/741/EU. The obtained results using the proposed framework are very encouraging regarding the future agricultural reuse of water. Indeed, the health risk score and environmental risk score were equal to 4 and 2, respectively, corresponding to low risk. This result aligns with the water quality of ultrafiltration Corleone's plant, which can be classified as Class A/Class B according to 2020/741/EU.