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Design Possibilities for Decentralized Treatment
DESIGN POSSIBILITIES FOR DECENTRALIZED TREATMENT
Taubman Team considered both design and implementation of decentralized treatment options in the Occupation. While students have limited knowledge of community capacity and vision for sanitation in the Occupation, the most promising similar case was the case of Favela Encantado in Rio de Janeiro. This system would provide direct benefits of wastewater sanitation while having a positive externality of production of energy in the form of biogas. A well-designed treatment system could utilize the energy for public benefit, such as to power a street light. A biogas system can be modified to work at multiple scales and is relatively simple to build and maintain. Taubman College Team has begun brainstorming ideas to include secondary treatment in a biogas system with grey water treatment for increased efficiency.
To tackle design and implementation of decentralized treatment options, additional technical engineering assistance will be required as it is beyond the capacity of Taubman Team. The participatory visioning event will be critical for the engineer to understand what the Occupation wants and is capable of. The engineer can work with Taubman Team and sewage champions to design prototype decentralized communal options to test in the Occupation. Then, the prototypes can be modified and improved after initial testing.