Adam Heise
3-30-12
Waste Water Assignment
During the first part of the trip the class was shown a power point presentation in which introduced the sewage treatment plant. I gathered five facts from the information that was provided to me. The first fact was that water usually stays in the bay for 30-60 days. The second fact was that clean water means there is low productivity. The third fact was that after the outhouse came the septic tank. The fourth was that water is reused indirectly, and the fifth fact is in 1997, a clean water law was attempted to be passed, but they are currently still working on it.
The fertilizer called Oceangro is made from human waste. It is manufactured to fertilizer specifications from biosolids. Unlike other fertilizers like Scott, Oceangro is non-burning, slow released and rich in Iron and Calcium.
Sewage treatment has four stages. The first stage is Primary treatment. This is when the flows through large tanks. The tanks are used to settle sludge while the oils rise to the surface. The next type of treatment is called Secondary treatment. This is when the biological content of the sewage is degraded and filtered. Biological filtration is when the settled sewage is when the settled sewage is distributed into small holes continuously moving over beds of stones. The sewage is then passed into talks where the bacteria is separated and removed. Tertiary treatment is the final treatment stage where the water quality is raised before it is set back to the previous environments such as seas, rivers, lakes, etc.
The consequences of a failure in wastewater treatment are a decrease in marine life, poisons in the environment, and damage in our economy to pay for these mistakes. Sewage treatment removes contaminants from the water. If they didn’t exist residents of the existing area would catch disease and potentially perish.