The present situation and trends of wastewater treatment in small settlements and rural areas of Lithuania

This article presents the wastewater treatment in small settlements and rural areas ofLithuania, including descriptions of capacity and loading of wastewater treatment plants(WWTPs), types of treatment facilities, and development trends of biological treatmentfacilities. In 2000 Lithuania had 597 WWTPs with capacity up to 1000 m3/d, 95% of them arethe biological treatment plants. Today the most of these WWTPs are unloaded due to thetendency to centralise wastewater treatment in rural areas of Lithuania that were in the eightand ninth decades.In small settlements and rural areas of Lithuania the aeration facilities are predominant. In theeight and ninth decades practically only the activated sludge systems were built. The situationbegan to change in the last decade of the last century: the biological filters and soil filtrationfacilities with discharge into surface waters were applied more frequently, so the building ofaeration facilities started to decrease.