Milk processing effluents typically present a considerable burden to the environemnt. The level of burden can be determined with the use of ATV (Allgemeine Technische Vertragsbedingungen), VDI (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) and BAT (Best Available Techniques) standards, or via operational monitoring. Water emissions from dairy plants are associated with high water pollution costs. In our survey of dairy processing plants, we found water emissions in excess of ATV and BAT standard predictions. As dairy plants are usually connected to public sewer systems with centralized water treatment facilities, the economic viability of installing effective waste water pre-treatment plants is an important issue to examine. In Slovenia, dairy
plants pay water pollution fees and contribute to clean-up costs in centralized water treatment plants. This regime is similar to that in many other European countries. A preliminary test of the efficacy of flotation pretreatment
plants exhibited sufficient cleaning effects to reduce total anual burden by more than half. This level of cleaning efficiency could greatly lower the cost of water pollution. An investment in installing pretreatment
plants under such conditions would likely become cost-effective in a few years.
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