This week we took a trip to the REWA wastewater treatment facility to see firsthand what happens to what we flush down the toilet everyday.
I can honestly say my nose has never encountered a smell, nor my eyes a sight, quite comparable to the primary settling tanks. Thousands of gallons of raw sewage, solids being allowed to settle out at the bottom to be swept out by huge rotating booms. From there the separated wastewater, still containing a good amount of suspended solids, goes to secondary treatment by specialized bacteria. The smell in this tank reminded me very much of our own Living Machine, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, since the Living Machine functions on basically the same premise.
One thing that did somewhat shock, if not horrify, me was the large pile of trash that had been initially grated out of the wastewater. It didn't surprise me that people flushed some pretty outlandish things (I saw a piece of a shoe). What concerned me was that if these were the things large enough to be caught in the grates, what about all the countless chemicals and medicines that people assuredly forgot about once they flushed them down? It suddenly made sense to me how these things were wreaking havoc on creatures, particularly fish and amphibians, in our waterways.
No comments:
Post a Comment