Talavera de la Reina

Site: Talavera de la Reina is a city with ~83,000 inhabitants in central Iberian Peninsula in Spain. The city is settled along the river Tagus on a broad bank. Talavera has a transition climate between the harsher continental Mediterranean climate of the central plateau and the milder  Mediterranean climate, with low temperatures in winter and a hot and dry summer. The Urban Real Lab is located at the local wastewater treatment plant, which also hosts the LIFE INTEXT project, focusing on the research and combination of intensive and extensive nature-based solutions technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse in small communities.

Situation: Nature-based solutions technologies for domestic wastewater treatment are being tested at Talavera wastewater treatment plant, including high-rate algae ponds, floating wetlands, constructed wetlands and their combination with conventional biological processes such as trickling filters and rotating biological contactors. Validation of NICE wastewater nature-based solution will allow a comparison with LIFE INTEXT solutions. In addition, the wastewater treatment plant is near Tagus River, the longest in the Iberian Peninsula and with a high ecological value, which suffers from pollution from insufficient urban wastewater treatment, industrial effluents and agriculture.

Solution: Talavera is an ideal location to test a wastewater nature-based solutions technology, as it can be compared against 16 other INTEXT technologies. Moreover the proximity to the River Tagus allows to evaluate the effectiveness of nature-based solutions in river restoration. The proposed NICE technologies to be tested at Talavera consist of constructed wetlands designed to treat 2 m3/d WW and 10 m3/d of river water.