Environmental Quality
Water reuse
Lisbon's Strategic Water Reuse Plan
The plan will enable the municipality to save 3 millionm3 of drinking water by 2025 (around 75% of current consumption) and the city's large consumers to save up to 6 million m3. It involves the creation of a 55km network of water for reuse, Água+, from Lisbon's 3 wastewater treatment plants. The first phase, to be fully implemented by 2020, is already in operation in Alcântara, Frente Ribeirinha and Parque das Nações.
This water is not potable, but it is safe for irrigation, washing streets, creating lakes or in industrial cooling systems.
In March 2022, Lisbon was granted a license by the Portuguese Environment Agency to reuse water for irrigation in Parque das Nações - North Zone, produced by the Beirolas Water Factory - more information in the news area.
Supply and Treatment
EPAL - Empresa Portuguesa das Águas Livres, is the company responsible for production.
EPAL - Empresa Portuguesa das Águas Livres, is the company responsible for producing, treating and supplying water to the city of Lisbon. After being consumed, it is taken through the sewers to the Wastewater Treatment Plants (ETAR) of Chelas and Alcântara (Lisbon), and Beirolas (Loures).
Monitoring
Environmental monitoring has been carried out on the Parque das Nações waterfront since 1996. In 2010, Lisbon City Council extended the study to the entire Lisbon waterfront.
Currently, the municipal water quality control program, in the various matrices and uses indicated, monitors more than 100 sites, totaling around 265 collection points, including drinking water at specific points in the building network of municipal buildings, in addition to the analytical control carried out by EPAL. This monitoring makes it possible to intervene in situations of non-compliance, with special emphasis on the parameters "Coliform Bacteria" and "Enterococci".
The municipality's Bromatology and Water Laboratory (LBA), which is EN ISO 9001:2015 certified, monitors the quality of water in municipal buildings or under municipal management with public access, and in public spaces, in drinking fountains, watering points, fountains, canteens, markets, swimming pools, wells, boreholes, lakes and other bodies of water in parks and gardens. The results of the physicochemical and microbiological analyses of the monitoring of water samples, namely drinking, surface, groundwater, ornamental and recreational, comply with the provisions of the legislation in force, in terms of use (Decree-Law no. 306/2007 of August 27, no. 236/98 of August 1, Regulatory Decree no. 5/97 of March 31 and Ordinance no. 353-A/2013 of December 4).
Water points monitored