Any water whose quality has been affected after being used by human-related activities is considered to be wastewater. Therefore, wastewater management is intrinsically related to water quality [Page 3050]management. Its definition can be broadly summarized as the activities that a person or a group of individuals or entities carries out to protect public and environmental health from the adverse effects of contaminants found in wastewater. Managing wastewater encompasses several important areas that can be summarized as follows:

• The collection and transportation of the wastewater away from highly populated or environmentally sensitive areas via sewerage networks (sewerage is the infrastructure used to collect and transport wastewater, including pipes, pumps, screens, channels, and combined sewer overflows, used to move sewage from its origin to the point of eventual ...