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This is what most people envision of a wastewater treatment plant, but there's a more low-tech system called constructed wetlands.
The Village of Minoa treats 130,000 gallons of wastewater each day using these constructed wetlands. There are three cells that are two feet deep, two hundred feet by one hundred feet, built at a one percent pitch to move the wastewater by gravity and planted in these cells are phragmites to help clean the water.
“This is 14 years old. It's working great. We're getting ninety nine percent removals. The biosolids are contained right here. We never have to handle biosolids. As the organisms die off they have their own anaerobic digester at the bottom,” said Steve Giarusso, Minoa Wastewater Treatment Supervisor.
Primary water from Minoa enters the plant where solids are settled out. The remaining water and solids are gravity fed into the cells.
“Think about it now, third world country, no electricity, and no chemicals. The challenge was to use the materials that you only have around you and build a system that works,” said Giarusso.
We just have some raw data; it's got to be reproduced yet. We decided we finally got a break, we've got instruments to look at it and we've cracked certain pharmaceuticals that have never been cracked and we did it with this constructed wetland.
Waste is most often treated using expensive and energy intensive equipment. In a constructed wetland, the gravity and microorganisms do all the work naturally.
“What's the draw back on a constructed wetland, ok? Look at the footage, ok? Its big it takes a large area. We're only using one hundred and thirty thousand gallons,” said Giarusso. “We're finding out how the hydraulics work that 130,000 is adequate.
Officials from the United Nations have been looking at this system for possible applications in third world countries.