The Dutch drinking water industry has decades of experience in distributing drinking water without a chlorine residual. In fact, the final step in this process was the renovation in 2006 of the Beerenplaat treatment plant, which is owned by Evides.

In this plant (100Mm3/a), UV disinfection, followed by activated carbon filtration, replaced the application of a low chlorine dose (0,2 mg/l) that was used for transportation, but had already disappeared in the distribution network.

This achievement concluded a process that Evides had begun three decades earlier. In 1976, in the laboratory of one of Evides’s predecessors, DWL Rotterdam, the formation of tri-halomethanes as a disinfection by-product was discovered by Dr. J. Rook. This stimulated the Dutch water industry to dispense with all chlorine in the treatment and distribution process of drinking water. The rehabilitation of the large Beerenplaat plant (constructed in the 1960s) thus completed the implementation of chlorine-free water for all Dutch water companies.