02-09-2013, 03:31 PM
The point of my novel above is that many people have unrealistic expectations about waste water "treatment". Even the big plants don't do anything about most chemical contaminants. All they really do is separate all that water from the waste. They then try to use up the dissolved nutrients that are in the water by providing a long residence time in a highly oxygenated environment. Ultimately all that water is dumped directly into the nearest ocean, lake, or river. It always is because there is nowhere else for it to go and the EPA is OK with that. So far in the description you should not be able to tell whether I am describing a domestic septic tank/leach field or Sand Island WWTP. The thing that the big municipal systems have going for them is that they have professionals operating them and EPA oversight to make people comply. If you are committed and knowlegeable you can do even better by not mixing the waste with water in the first place. If you don't flush with water then you would be hard pressed to do as badly as a multi-million dollar waste water plant that is bypassing even correcting for scale because you didn't intentionally make a nice runny soup.
It is kinda shocking but I have read of places where drinking water is drawn from the river upstream of a town, treated, and distributed. Wastewater is then treated and put back into the river downstream of the town. 20 miles away is another town. Same deal there. Between the treatment at the upstream wastewater plant, the resident time in the river, and the domestic water treatment, it meets all the required standards. Yum. It is however only a more compressed version of the water cycle we all learned in earth science class. We are spoiled here in Hawaii though. We really have excellent water resources compared to much of the mainland.
It is kinda shocking but I have read of places where drinking water is drawn from the river upstream of a town, treated, and distributed. Wastewater is then treated and put back into the river downstream of the town. 20 miles away is another town. Same deal there. Between the treatment at the upstream wastewater plant, the resident time in the river, and the domestic water treatment, it meets all the required standards. Yum. It is however only a more compressed version of the water cycle we all learned in earth science class. We are spoiled here in Hawaii though. We really have excellent water resources compared to much of the mainland.