Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment and Reuse in Chile: Reflections

This work aimed to analyze the wastewater treatment in Chile, as example of developing country, for discussing the participation and development of Constructed Wetlands (CW), addressing the current situation besides technical and regulatory challenges that allow increasing in their application, and water reuse of their effluents in irrigation activities. For this, official reports, scientific and regulatory information were discussed and analyzed. The results showed that Chile has a treatment coverage of 100% in urban areas. However, in rural areas the coverage is below 20%. Although there more than 800 WWTP, the CW have a minority participation below 2%, and CW were used only in decentralized WWTP as secondary treatment. CW were competitive in construction and operation cost. Likewise, experimental CW showed similar depurative performance than activated sludge systems. This would make to CW an attractive technology for descentralized WWTP. For this, WWTP proposals based on CW were analyzed, and new treatment sequences were also developed and discussed by area, but there are challenges to overcome. This challenges were discussed in this paper. Finally, wastewater reuse requires further research, as well as a specific regulatory framework. Furthermore, important definitions in legal and incentives issues are required. These points would be similar to other developing countries.