The
Fertigation
F o r m u l a
Spoon-fed nutrients + automatic irrigation = resource efficiencies
F
ertigation, simply defined, is a practice that delivers water-soluble minerals through an irrigation system. Fairly entrenched in the agricultural market, fertigation is arguably in its infancy within the municipal, commercial, and residential arena. Some have never heard of it. Others are slow to accept something new. Some are taking baby steps toward implementation. Others, such as major golf course and sports turf managers, are savvy in its science and serious about its benefits. Successful fertigation systems improve plant and turf health, enrich soil content, reduce the manpower
22
WATER EFFICIENCY
BY CAROL WASSON required for fertilization, and increase irrigation efficiency. As most municipalities are charged to do far more with far less, fertigation is certainly an idea whose time should be ripe. Most often described as spoonfeeding, fertigation is the application of nutrients at the precise rate and time they are needed—the ideal result being that crop yield or turf health is optimized, while less fertilizer (from a 20% to 50% reduction) is being used. And, because wellnourished plants better absorb water, less frequent watering is required. Although it’s difficult to measure how fertigation may or may not affect water conservation, the bottom line is this: Municipal, commercial, and
residential landscapes are often overwatered, which can lead to various plant diseases. Then when a decline is seen in the landscape, the tendency is to apply (and waste) even more water. Proper fertigation practices promote greater root length and density, allowing plant life to store and use water and nutrients more efficiently. Again, this is the ideal result, as successful fertigation is dependent on a number of factors, most importantly that the right fertilizers are chosen and administered at the right rate within any given application. Easy to say, not always easy to do—that’s why some may see the process as being somewhat complex. With that
January/February 2007
A Guidance Manual for
Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination Watershed protection in Cuyahoga County
By Harry Stark
T
he Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) provides public health services to 56 cities, villages, and townships in Cuyahoga County, OH, with an approximate population of 830,000. Cuyahoga County is on the shores of Lake Erie and contains three major watersheds: the Rocky River, the Cuyahoga River, and the Chagrin River, all of which drain to the lake. Of the 56 communities served, 55 are Phase II designated under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II program. The CCBH Watershed Protection Unit was developed and designed to protect public health and Cuyahoga County’s water-quality resources from the impact of point-source and nonpoint-source pollution. The Watershed Protection Unit also stresses
72
Stormwater
• January/February 2007
the utilization of watershed-based planning within the Cuyahoga County Board of Health as well as collaborative efforts with partnering agencies and regional authorities. This unit has been evolving and expanding over the last several years and now includes a variety of activities to assist Cuyahoga communities and collaborative partners. These activities include all programs as well as educational outreach and public involvement programs, which have an impact on both surface-and groundwater issues. Through the watershed activities, the Phase II stormwater regional program, and growth of watershed-based programs, the CCBH developed an Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) Guidance Manual for use by Phase IIdesignated communities in the state of Ohio. This manual provides the necessary protocol required by Phase II communities for their stormwater management plans. The manual also contains a model IDDE ordinance as well as an IDDE database.
CCBH Water-Quality Background and History The current Watershed Protection Unit has evolved dramatically over the last 20 years and has seen a clear shift in fundamental philosophy. The initial stages of this program were set in the mid-1980s. During this time, the CCBH developed a water-quality sampling program to assist in identifying failing household sewage treatment systems (HSTSs) throughout the CCBH’s jurisdiction. The sampling parameter used at this time was fecal coliform. These data assisted the Board of Health as well as communities with providing information concerning the HSTS within specific communities and watersheds. The CCBH performed hundreds of water-quality samples per year in ditches, storm sewers, and creeks throughout the county to obtain these data. The HSTSs located within the Board of Health’s jurisdiction are primarily off-lot discharging systems. Adverse geologic and hydrologic factors prevalent in www.stormh2o.com
this area cause most septic systems to discharge directly to receiving waters, ditches, or storm sewers. The evolution of the Board of Health’s HSTS program was a huge factor in the creation of the Watershed Protection Unit. What once was a development-minded HSTS program has now become one that utilizes the best available technology and exhibits a true concern for the environment. In 1992, the CCBH established its current HSTS Water Pollution Control Program. A broad watershed-based approach had begun to be utilized when investigating nuisances and identifying individual pollution sources. Sewage system evaluation results could be complemented by water-quality sampling data. In the fall of 1993, the CCBH became one of the first local health departments to launch a Household Sewage Operation and Maintenance Program. The fundamental activities of this program are HSTS evaluations on a routine basis (once every five years), water-quality sampling, educational outreach on care and maintenance of systems, and infrastructure planning and assistance with Cuyahoga County communities. Along with the ongoing nuisance investigation and requested point-of-sale evaluations, sanitarians now conduct widespread sewage system evaluations in clearly defined project areas. These evaluation results are combined with water-quality sampling
Source tracking www.stormh2o.com
data and are provided to local officials. The CCBH’s overall waterquality program also has changed over the years to take an overall watershedbased approach when dealing with water-quality issues. There are a number of activities and programs that are a part of this broad watershed-based approach. These include: • A regional stormwater program that is based on a more widespread consistent regional approach in dealing with the Phase II stormwater rules and requirements • A Bathing Beach program, which uses the NOWCAST system to predict bacterial levels at Huntington Beach seven days a week. Signs are posted daily showing the most current prediction, either GOOD or POOR. This system is allowing the use of same-day water-quality data rather than waiting for 24 hours after a water sample has been taken. This model was developed between the CCBH and the US Geological Survey for Huntington Beach and went live in 2006. The data from this system are available daily by 9:30 a.m. at www.ohionowcast.info and Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 216-201 -2000. Along with the NOWCAST predictive model, the CCBH is also utilizing DNA source tracking at Huntington Beach to identify regionally the pollution sources. It is currently working with the University of Toledo on the DNA analysis and has started to isolate hot zones where the DNA fingerprints are matching the problems located at the beach. The CCBH is currently planning for expanding investigative activities for 2007 to identify these areas and provide this information back to communities so that they can start to eliminate these problems.
• A household sewage program, which identifies failing systems across community boundaries and is based more on watershed-based boundaries. The CCBH still needs to work with individual communities, but by looking at these systems with a watershed-based approach, it has been able to eliminate some of these pollution sources in specific watersheds or subwatersheds. • Watershed programs. The CCBH has worked collaboratively over the past seven years on a number of watershed projects by providing data, planning, and leadership on specific projects. It is now the lead agency on the Tinkers Creek Watershed Project. The CCBH went into a collaborative partnership with the Tinkers Creek Land Conservancy January/February 2007 •
Stormwater
73
A Guidance Manual for
Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination Watershed protection in Cuyahoga County
By Harry Stark
T
he Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) provides public health services to 56 cities, villages, and townships in Cuyahoga County, OH, with an approximate population of 830,000. Cuyahoga County is on the shores of Lake Erie and contains three major watersheds: the Rocky River, the Cuyahoga River, and the Chagrin River, all of which drain to the lake. Of the 56 communities served, 55 are Phase II designated under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II program. The CCBH Watershed Protection Unit was developed and designed to protect public health and Cuyahoga County’s water-quality resources from the impact of point-source and nonpoint-source pollution. The Watershed Protection Unit also stresses
72
Stormwater
• January/February 2007
the utilization of watershed-based planning within the Cuyahoga County Board of Health as well as collaborative efforts with partnering agencies and regional authorities. This unit has been evolving and expanding over the last several years and now includes a variety of activities to assist Cuyahoga communities and collaborative partners. These activities include all programs as well as educational outreach and public involvement programs, which have an impact on both surface-and groundwater issues. Through the watershed activities, the Phase II stormwater regional program, and growth of watershed-based programs, the CCBH developed an Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) Guidance Manual for use by Phase IIdesignated communities in the state of Ohio. This manual provides the necessary protocol required by Phase II communities for their stormwater management plans. The manual also contains a model IDDE ordinance as well as an IDDE database.
CCBH Water-Quality Background and History The current Watershed Protection Unit has evolved dramatically over the last 20 years and has seen a clear shift in fundamental philosophy. The initial stages of this program were set in the mid-1980s. During this time, the CCBH developed a water-quality sampling program to assist in identifying failing household sewage treatment systems (HSTSs) throughout the CCBH’s jurisdiction. The sampling parameter used at this time was fecal coliform. These data assisted the Board of Health as well as communities with providing information concerning the HSTS within specific communities and watersheds. The CCBH performed hundreds of water-quality samples per year in ditches, storm sewers, and creeks throughout the county to obtain these data. The HSTSs located within the Board of Health’s jurisdiction are primarily off-lot discharging systems. Adverse geologic and hydrologic factors prevalent in www.stormh2o.com
this area cause most septic systems to discharge directly to receiving waters, ditches, or storm sewers. The evolution of the Board of Health’s HSTS program was a huge factor in the creation of the Watershed Protection Unit. What once was a development-minded HSTS program has now become one that utilizes the best available technology and exhibits a true concern for the environment. In 1992, the CCBH established its current HSTS Water Pollution Control Program. A broad watershed-based approach had begun to be utilized when investigating nuisances and identifying individual pollution sources. Sewage system evaluation results could be complemented by water-quality sampling data. In the fall of 1993, the CCBH became one of the first local health departments to launch a Household Sewage Operation and Maintenance Program. The fundamental activities of this program are HSTS evaluations on a routine basis (once every five years), water-quality sampling, educational outreach on care and maintenance of systems, and infrastructure planning and assistance with Cuyahoga County communities. Along with the ongoing nuisance investigation and requested point-of-sale evaluations, sanitarians now conduct widespread sewage system evaluations in clearly defined project areas. These evaluation results are combined with water-quality sampling
Source tracking www.stormh2o.com
data and are provided to local officials. The CCBH’s overall waterquality program also has changed over the years to take an overall watershedbased approach when dealing with water-quality issues. There are a number of activities and programs that are a part of this broad watershed-based approach. These include: • A regional stormwater program that is based on a more widespread consistent regional approach in dealing with the Phase II stormwater rules and requirements • A Bathing Beach program, which uses the NOWCAST system to predict bacterial levels at Huntington Beach seven days a week. Signs are posted daily showing the most current prediction, either GOOD or POOR. This system is allowing the use of same-day water-quality data rather than waiting for 24 hours after a water sample has been taken. This model was developed between the CCBH and the US Geological Survey for Huntington Beach and went live in 2006. The data from this system are available daily by 9:30 a.m. at www.ohionowcast.info and Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 216-201 -2000. Along with the NOWCAST predictive model, the CCBH is also utilizing DNA source tracking at Huntington Beach to identify regionally the pollution sources. It is currently working with the University of Toledo on the DNA analysis and has started to isolate hot zones where the DNA fingerprints are matching the problems located at the beach. The CCBH is currently planning for expanding investigative activities for 2007 to identify these areas and provide this information back to communities so that they can start to eliminate these problems.
• A household sewage program, which identifies failing systems across community boundaries and is based more on watershed-based boundaries. The CCBH still needs to work with individual communities, but by looking at these systems with a watershed-based approach, it has been able to eliminate some of these pollution sources in specific watersheds or subwatersheds. • Watershed programs. The CCBH has worked collaboratively over the past seven years on a number of watershed projects by providing data, planning, and leadership on specific projects. It is now the lead agency on the Tinkers Creek Watershed Project. The CCBH went into a collaborative partnership with the Tinkers Creek Land Conservancy January/February 2007 •
Stormwater
73
The Evolution of
Innovative Leak Monitoring Effort
an
Strides are being made toward a cost-effective approach to reducing the 6 billion gallons of drinking water being lost through leakage probably never would have found it in water mains across the surveying with geophones or other conventional listening devices that traUnited States each day. ditionally have been used to try and
U
ntil recently, an underground water line in Manville, NJ, has been leaking at a rate of 225 gallons each minute. How long it had been leaking is not known because the line was situated in a shale-type soil so the leaking drinking water did not surface but instead drained through the porous shale. In a year’s time at that 225-gallon-perminute rate, 118,260,000 gallons of
BY CHARLES D. BADER water would have been lost from that single leak. At a replacement cost of $0.65 per thousand gallons of treated drinking water, the annual costs of that leak would have been $77,000. Could it have gone on leaking undetected for a year or more? Theoretically, yes, says Wayne Morgan, vice president, service delivery, for American Water’s Northeast Region. “Since this particular leak was caused by a circumferential break, it generated very little noise, so we
find underground leaks. It would seem to corroborate the American Society of Civil Engineers’ [ASCE’s] mindboggling estimate of this country’s loss from drinking-water leakage.” In its 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, the ASCE states, “Each day, six billion gallons of clean, treated drinking water disappears, mostly due to old, leaky pipes and mains. That’s enough water to serve the population of a state the size of California.” Water leaks are a problem plaguing water systems nationwide, and one of the biggest challenges facing the United States is
how to improve and maintain infrastructure for generations to come. The case of the Manville leak is instructional as to the loss potential of underground pipe leaks, but after an unknown leak duration, it was detected this April during one of the pilot programs American Water is conducting in several northeastern states. The core technology that enabled this difficult leak to be discovered and located is acoustic leakage monitoring. This technology listens in part to the moving water itself and hence is effective with plastic pipe, ductile iron pipe, or copper service lines. This technology, placed in the field for continuous monitoring, has come a long way, and now it shows great promise to allow utilities to monitor leaks before they surface, to pinpoint the location of these leaks, and to repair them before there is serious water loss and/or expensive collateral damage to landscaping, paving, or sidewalks. American Water and at least one individual water district (see sidebar on page 64) have been working with several leak detection companies in search of a low-cost, permanent leak detection system or systems that could be distributed throughout a water system and provide a leak analysis “on demand,” Morgan recalls. “We have been using Flow Metrix’s MLOG device for most of our pilot programs. “Strapped to active service pipes, the MLOG is designed to monitor sound on a nightly basis. Its range extends about 500 feet for metal pipes, reaching into the distribution system and detecting ‘noise’ from other nearby mains or services. Because of the sensitivity of the sensor, only about 10% of services must be equipped with the unit in order to monitor the entire distribution system. The percentage depends on the density of services, the pipe materials in use, and the distribution system. Given the layout and the relatively low cost of the MLOG unit, the effective price of the equipment is less than $15 per connection. “Pipe noise monitoring is pro-
grammed to occur frequently during a quiet time [12:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.] The monitor catalogs the data in 10-minute segments and selects the least noisy time period as a single data point for comparison with other MLOGs in the field. Designed for a walk-by meter reader to collect, the original MLOG had its own radio transmitter that could transmit stored files of information. The data would be effectively communicated to the meter reader as he collected meter readings.”
AMR Linkage This walk-by collection of acoustic leak data so closely parallels meter-reading activity that it inevitably led to an examination of the feasibility of applying fixed network automatic meterreading (AMR) technologies for both functions. AMR has become an increasingly reliable cost-effective method to convey customer meter readings with minimal error and personnel to perform utility billing and meter operations. The meter-reading factors that are normally considered in deciding
• Inclement weather conditions What is often overlooked is the value of the communication network established by AMR that might be used to relay other information about the water system. If systems that supply that information generate sufficient value, they can increase the cost-effectiveness of the combined system and justify the capital expenditure. With its innovative acoustical monitoring technology, Morgan asserts, American Water has not only found a way to add value to AMR but may have developed a revolutionary approach to maintaining minimal leak levels in a water system. In a fixed-network AMR system, collectors stationed on poles, rooftops, or tanks throughout the meter routes pick up meter data at regular intervals from two to 12 times a day. Wireless devices transmit the data to the AMR control center that organizes the data, transmits data to other locations, and prepares reports. Alternatively, driveby AMR is also used in some communities, and an MLOG collector could be used as a separate recovery device
“The estimated cost of non-revenue water loss is $200,000—providing strong financial incentive to target leak reduction as a top priority.” whether to proceed with an investment in an AMR program include the following: • The increasing difficulty in accessing meters set inside of residential buildings • Concerns about personal security • Hard-to-read and sometimes hard-toaccess meters that are set in pits • Significant operational costs for walkby drive-by readings
in the common drive-by vehicle. However, higher operational driveby costs, a possible slowed rate of MLOG collection, and longer intervals between leak data collection indicate that the fixed network AMR system is operationally preferable if a utility can afford its higher capital costs and frequent water leaks are suspected. For the proposed MLOG link, Morgan points out, the fixed-network AMR
Circle #40 on Reader Service Card
60
WATER EFFICIENCY
September/October 2006
w w w . w a t e r e f f i c i e n c y . n e t
WATER EFFICIENCY
61
The Evolution of
Innovative Leak Monitoring Effort
an
Strides are being made toward a cost-effective approach to reducing the 6 billion gallons of drinking water being lost through leakage probably never would have found it in water mains across the surveying with geophones or other conventional listening devices that traUnited States each day. ditionally have been used to try and
U
ntil recently, an underground water line in Manville, NJ, has been leaking at a rate of 225 gallons each minute. How long it had been leaking is not known because the line was situated in a shale-type soil so the leaking drinking water did not surface but instead drained through the porous shale. In a year’s time at that 225-gallon-perminute rate, 118,260,000 gallons of
BY CHARLES D. BADER water would have been lost from that single leak. At a replacement cost of $0.65 per thousand gallons of treated drinking water, the annual costs of that leak would have been $77,000. Could it have gone on leaking undetected for a year or more? Theoretically, yes, says Wayne Morgan, vice president, service delivery, for American Water’s Northeast Region. “Since this particular leak was caused by a circumferential break, it generated very little noise, so we
find underground leaks. It would seem to corroborate the American Society of Civil Engineers’ [ASCE’s] mindboggling estimate of this country’s loss from drinking-water leakage.” In its 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, the ASCE states, “Each day, six billion gallons of clean, treated drinking water disappears, mostly due to old, leaky pipes and mains. That’s enough water to serve the population of a state the size of California.” Water leaks are a problem plaguing water systems nationwide, and one of the biggest challenges facing the United States is
how to improve and maintain infrastructure for generations to come. The case of the Manville leak is instructional as to the loss potential of underground pipe leaks, but after an unknown leak duration, it was detected this April during one of the pilot programs American Water is conducting in several northeastern states. The core technology that enabled this difficult leak to be discovered and located is acoustic leakage monitoring. This technology listens in part to the moving water itself and hence is effective with plastic pipe, ductile iron pipe, or copper service lines. This technology, placed in the field for continuous monitoring, has come a long way, and now it shows great promise to allow utilities to monitor leaks before they surface, to pinpoint the location of these leaks, and to repair them before there is serious water loss and/or expensive collateral damage to landscaping, paving, or sidewalks. American Water and at least one individual water district (see sidebar on page 64) have been working with several leak detection companies in search of a low-cost, permanent leak detection system or systems that could be distributed throughout a water system and provide a leak analysis “on demand,” Morgan recalls. “We have been using Flow Metrix’s MLOG device for most of our pilot programs. “Strapped to active service pipes, the MLOG is designed to monitor sound on a nightly basis. Its range extends about 500 feet for metal pipes, reaching into the distribution system and detecting ‘noise’ from other nearby mains or services. Because of the sensitivity of the sensor, only about 10% of services must be equipped with the unit in order to monitor the entire distribution system. The percentage depends on the density of services, the pipe materials in use, and the distribution system. Given the layout and the relatively low cost of the MLOG unit, the effective price of the equipment is less than $15 per connection. “Pipe noise monitoring is pro-
grammed to occur frequently during a quiet time [12:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.] The monitor catalogs the data in 10-minute segments and selects the least noisy time period as a single data point for comparison with other MLOGs in the field. Designed for a walk-by meter reader to collect, the original MLOG had its own radio transmitter that could transmit stored files of information. The data would be effectively communicated to the meter reader as he collected meter readings.”
AMR Linkage This walk-by collection of acoustic leak data so closely parallels meter-reading activity that it inevitably led to an examination of the feasibility of applying fixed network automatic meterreading (AMR) technologies for both functions. AMR has become an increasingly reliable cost-effective method to convey customer meter readings with minimal error and personnel to perform utility billing and meter operations. The meter-reading factors that are normally considered in deciding
• Inclement weather conditions What is often overlooked is the value of the communication network established by AMR that might be used to relay other information about the water system. If systems that supply that information generate sufficient value, they can increase the cost-effectiveness of the combined system and justify the capital expenditure. With its innovative acoustical monitoring technology, Morgan asserts, American Water has not only found a way to add value to AMR but may have developed a revolutionary approach to maintaining minimal leak levels in a water system. In a fixed-network AMR system, collectors stationed on poles, rooftops, or tanks throughout the meter routes pick up meter data at regular intervals from two to 12 times a day. Wireless devices transmit the data to the AMR control center that organizes the data, transmits data to other locations, and prepares reports. Alternatively, driveby AMR is also used in some communities, and an MLOG collector could be used as a separate recovery device
“The estimated cost of non-revenue water loss is $200,000—providing strong financial incentive to target leak reduction as a top priority.” whether to proceed with an investment in an AMR program include the following: • The increasing difficulty in accessing meters set inside of residential buildings • Concerns about personal security • Hard-to-read and sometimes hard-toaccess meters that are set in pits • Significant operational costs for walkby drive-by readings
in the common drive-by vehicle. However, higher operational driveby costs, a possible slowed rate of MLOG collection, and longer intervals between leak data collection indicate that the fixed network AMR system is operationally preferable if a utility can afford its higher capital costs and frequent water leaks are suspected. For the proposed MLOG link, Morgan points out, the fixed-network AMR
Circle #40 on Reader Service Card
60
WATER EFFICIENCY
September/October 2006
w w w . w a t e r e f f i c i e n c y . n e t
WATER EFFICIENCY
61
other profession. Even when he studied civil engineering at the University of Arkansas, he dreamed of working in the decentralized business. In his view, a well-working decentralized system serving a growing housing subdivision is just as magnificent as is any highway expansion or towering skyscraper. After all, the decentralized system is placing far less strain on the environment than is that big metal-and-glass skyscraper or all those twisting lanes of asphalt. “I don’t think people really understand what decentralized is all about,” Davis said. “It’s a relatively new field. It’s growing so quickly, and changes are coming at such a rapid pace. It’s something new that not every other engineer out there is doing. I see in the future a huge demand in this business. I think a lot of people are going to be interested in decentralized wastewater systems.” Davis’ story is a good one. Problem is, it’s too rare. The struggle to attract young talent to the decentralized wastewater industry is an ongoing one. Industry officials, though, are trying to change this. They’re trying to teach engineering students that the onsite field is booming, and that the industry offers more than enough challenges to keep the brightest engineers busy. Is the message getting out? Slowly. But, industry officials say, progress is being made.
The Battle For
Young Talent
The Need For Inspiration
Ask veterans of the onsite water treatment industry and they’ll tell you that it’s difficult, sometimes near impossible, to attract young talent. But it can be done. By Dan Rafter
W
orkboots caked with mud. Pants dripping sludge. That’s the work attire Andy Davis prefers. His preferred office? Dirty fields, muddy holes and fresh construction sites. Sure, Davis may occasionally have to resort to wearing a suit and tie. He may need to spend a day sitting at a desk making business calls. He may even have to trudge through something as dreary as inventory duty. But give Davis his choice? He’d rather be slogging through the mud as contractors install one of the decentralized wastewater systems that he helped design. Davis in 2003 founded New Water
28 • O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
Systems in Little Rock, AR, designing and selling decentralized wastewater systems. Business has been good ever since. In just the company’s first year, Davis and his partners installed three Orenco Advantex treatment systems. The following year, on the heels of more growth, New Water became an ECCI company, when Davis sold his young business to the prominent Arkansas engineering firm of Engineering, Compliance and Construction Inc. Today, New Water Systems provides general wastewater collection products for any size or type of small sewer system. The company’s territory has expanded to include Missouri and Oklahoma. And Davis still likes getting his boots covered with mud. Just a typical decentralized success story?
Not quite. Davis is a rarity. He’s only 31, and started his business when he was just 28. Ask veterans of the onsite water treatment industry and they’ll tell you that it’s difficult, sometimes near impossible, to attract young talent like Davis to the business. Maybe that’s not a surprise. Working with wastewater is hardly a glamorous field. Engineering students fresh out of college are more apt to work in the fields of transportation, building and computer science, where they’re not likely to spend long hours tramping through muddy construction sites. Davis, project engineer with New Water Systems, understands this. Transportation engineers, electrical engineers and civil engineers work on projects that can fuel the imagination. Davis, though, doesn’t envy any
www.onsitewater.com
Kitt Farrell-Poe knows exactly what the industry needs to attract more young engineers: inspiring professors who are committed to teaching why decentralized wastewater systems are a growing option for many municipalities. Problem is, there aren’t enough teachers out there who have ever worked with decentralized wastewater systems. Farrell-Poe has. She is a water-quality specialist and a professor in the department of agricultural and bio-systems engineering at the University of Arizona. She’s active, too, with the Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment, a group of educational institutions that cooperate on wastewater training and research efforts. One of the group’s goals? To spread the word about the growing field of decentralized wastewater treatment. “The problem is that there are just not that many engineers who are trained in this field, who took any courses on decentralized at the university level,” Farrell-Poe said. “If there are no champions for this field at the university level, we’re not going to attract young people.” Farrell-Poe knows this first-hand.
January/February 2007
“When I was getting my engineering degree, I had maybe one chapter, if even, on onsite treatment,” she said. The members of the consortium hope to change this by addressing the problem head-on. Group members worked together to create a standard curriculum designed to expose university engineering and science students to decentralized wastewater treatment options. The curriculum covers the fundamental principles of decentralized wastewater treatment, planning systems, soil and site evaluation, troubleshooting and resolution, regulatory and permit issues, on-site technology and system and materials management. So far, at least seven universities across the country are using at least some elements of the curriculum, Farrell-Poe said. Farrell-Poe already teaches a similar course for the University of Arizona: Design of Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems. The three-credit, online-only course covers the design of simple and specialized treatment systems, the operation and monitoring of simple and complex systems, septage management and water reuse. The university offers the course every spring. Last spring, 12 students took the online course. Two of them, Farrell-Poe says, have expressed interest in possibly working in the field. That may seem like a small success, but it is a success, nonetheless. Inspiring engineering students at the university level remains the key to bringing younger talent to the field, Farrell-Poe said. “The mentoring provided by perceptive and dedicated professors is badly needed out there,” she said. “I don’t know, though, how to get this to happen. It’s not a sexy field. And students don’t really see a lot of decentralized. What they see more often are the big-pipe projects. You can’t force professors into teaching something that they’re not interested in.” The problem will only grow when professors and champions of the field like FarrellPoe retire. If no one is available to step in and teach Farell-Poe’s decentralized course after she retires, then the course will most likely disappear, along with the hope of inspiring more students to give onsite a try.
A Mentor Davis, the young civil engineer behind New Water Systems, gives credence to Farrell-Poe’s words. His inspiration, the reason he entered the field three years ago? A professor at the University of Arkansas who taught about the field with passion. “I had an excellent professor,” Davis said.
“I was going to take anything that he taught. If he would have taught structural engineering, I’d probably be designing structures right now. He was so passionate about the field.” That professor was Mark Gross, who is now an engineer working with Orenco Systems Inc., one of the biggest names in wastewater treatment. Gross remembers Davis, and considers him a rarity in the business: an engineering student who was inspired enough to stray from electrical or mechanical engineering and forge his own career in the decentralized business. “I can tell you why people like Andy are so rare: We are not teaching onsite in the engineering curriculum at a majority of universities,” Gross said. “The engineering curriculum is so full right now. By the time we cover the conventional treatment stuff, there is not enough time to deal with the decentralized stuff.” Typically, decentralized wastewater is offered as a technical elective. Mostly seniors are able to take such electives. But these senior students have plenty of options available to them when it comes time to select their electives. Professors, then, make the difference. Dynamic professors who have earned solid reputations will attract students to an elective. Those without this style? Their electives will attract students only as a last resort. “How do we get the dynamic professors teaching those courses? That’s a challenge,” Gross said. “Most of the professors have never been exposed to onsite treatment, either. Unless it’s crouched in terms of green solutions, onsite doesn’t get much play.” Once students graduate from college, they typically head off to work in consulting engineering firms. These firms are in business to make money, and they tend to tackle work that will earn them high profits. This works against decentralized treatment. When consulting engineers have to spend long hours learning a new treatment method—such as onsite—only to apply it to a one-time project, they end up decreasing their profits. If the market for onsite was bigger, and these consulting engineers had more decentralized projects to look forward to, perhaps then the extra effort to learn decentralized methods would pay off. “I have had students who were interested in decentralized. But once they got out of school and went to work, it was almost as if the opportunities weren’t there,” Gross said. “Most of them ended up working for consulting firms doing mostly centralized treatment.” Gross hopes that with decentralized slow-
O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
•
29
S islar Now
passed as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Given that it is the first solar tax credit in 20 years, it has expanded markets for all solar technologies. Coupled with California’s deep pockets for incentives and design of the new California Solar Initiative, solar investment dollars are no longer dependent on a customer’s ability to pay. Since nonprofits, such as government offices, schools, and universities, can’t take advantage of the federal tax credits, energy service companies and financial institutions have jumped in and are signing power purchase agreements to own and maintain the system and sell the electricity to the customer at a price discounted off the utility tariff. The result is that much larger installations are being installed. And for-profit businesses are jumping in, signing power purchase agreements as well. They prefer holding on to their cash and turning over to experts an infrastructure project that is outside their core business. Following are a small selection of solar installations in California, Nevada, and New Jersey, dating back five and six years. All areas of the economy are investing in solar systems, not just these schools, local governments, and retail stores, but wineries, farms, water utilities, and waste water districts—far too many to cover here.
Big Business
The waltz of the marketplace is performed by policymakers. By Lyn Corum
C
alifornia is dominating the solar energy business—90% of the US solar market is in the state, according to Arno Harris, chief executive officer and president of Recurrent Energy, a solar startup company in which Mohr Davidow Ventures invested $10 million in June 2007. Since 1998, $230 million in rebates has been spent in California, and the state now has 62 MW of installed capacity, representing more than 15,000 installations, according to the California Energy Commission (CEC). With the new California Solar Initiative, $3.2 billion will be invested in the industry by 2016. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s goal is to have 3,000 MW installed by 2020. Underlying this popularity throughout the US, beyond the availability of state and federal tax incentives, of course, is the drive to cut global warming and to increase reliance on renewable resources in the interest of national security. Thirty-six states offer incentives or rebates to install solar systems. But none have invested the money that California has. For example, Nevada’s utilities, Sierra Pacific and Nevada Power, will be spending about 48 • DISTRIBUTED energy
$2 billion on all renewable resources—some 22—by 2015. Now in its fifth year, Nevada’s utility customers have installed 254 solar systems. Almost all—231—are on residences. This year’s program has a cap of 3,760 kW (3.7 MW) and it is already three times oversubscribed. It became fully subscribed within hours on August 1, when applicants could begin registering for the new year. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced in May 2007 it now has 1,840 solar installations across the state, totaling 26 MW and more than doubled its solar capacity in the first nine months of 2006. It spent $147 million in rebates in 2006. In addition to rebates that are on the order of $3.80 per watt, the state has created a Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC) Program. SRECs are created when the solar system is installed, and utilities are required to purchase them, thereby compensating generators, and making individual solar systems more affordable. New York’s $48 million program now has 891 solar systems installed—4,216 kW installed on residences, and 1,338 kW installed on commercial buildings for a total of 5,554 kW. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority offers incentives of $4.00 per watt up to 5 kW to residents, $4.50 per watt for building integrated systems, and $5.00 per watt to schools and nonprofits.
California’s solar initiative, while funded very richly through investor-owned utility bill public interest charges, is complicated and its incentives are lower than the examples just cited. The incentives are designed to decrease on an average of 7% per year between 2007 and 2017. They now start at $2.50 per watt for both residential and commercial customers, and $3.25 per watt for government and nonprofit customers. By year three they will drop to $2.20/Watt for residents and commercial customers, and by year 10, they will be down to 20 cents per watt. However, the new element added to the program is creating incentives for solar companies to offer customers large systems that will be installed, owned, and maintained by investors who gain tax benefits with the arrangement: If the system is over 100 kW, the incentives are performancebased and are paid out over five years, instead of up front for the smaller systems. Starting in 2008, systems over 50 kW will be paid incentives over the five years. And in 2010, the bar will be moved down to 30 kW. Once systems hit the bar, they will not be able to receive incentives up front to help pay the initial cost of the system.
Nonprofits Many public service entities are looking for predictability in their energy costs. Customers are finding the new financial structures a hedge agent against utility price volatility, says a representative of Chevron Energy Services, a major energy services provider to this sector. The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) has the most ambitious plan seen to date. It intends to take all nine campuses off the grid—that would eliminate a 45-MW electrical load. The plan is to install 1 MW or more of solar photovoltaic systems at each campus in combination with other noncarbon generation, such as wind and geothermal, plus energy storage. The energy-storage systems will utilize one or all of three new technologies: flow batteries, lithium hydrid solid state storage, or a new form of lithium ion batteries that can be stored in a container the size of a suitcase in each building. Larry Eisenberg, executive director of facilities planning and development for
Introducing Solar as a Service What has given the solar business the biggest boost is the commercial tax credit
January/February 2008
January/February 2008
the LACCD expected proposals from three energy service companies on December 1, 2007. He says each campus will have at least three acres of panels on building roofs or as shade canopies on parking lots. The winning bidder will finance and own the systems, estimated to cost between $7 million and $9 million. The LACCD will sign power purchase agreements with the energy company or financial entity owning the system and pay a reduced price for the energy. The systems need to be installed in 2008 so that the owner can take advantage of federal energy tax credits which, if not extended by Congress, will expire on December 31, 2008. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will give rebates of up to $3.50 per watt to each project on six of the campuses. The other three are in Southern California Edison’s service territory, and they will qualify for rebates from the California Solar Incentive program.
ergy-efficient facilities program in its kindergarten-through-12th-grade education system. Chevron will design, build, operate, and maintain 5 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays at the district’s schools. Bank of America will own the solar equipment and sell power to the district under a service contract at rates significantly below market utility rates. In the first phase of the project, 2 MW will be installed on the roofs or parking lot shade canopies of six high schools at a cost to Bank of America of $18.1 million. This phase is expected to be completed by early 2008. Subsequent phases will add solar systems to seven schools and will also include energy efficiency measure that will reduce the district’s energy purchases and operating costs. California Solar Initiative incentives, totaling $4.2 million, will offset the first phase solar equipment costs, along with federal investment tax credits, which Bank
…Each campus will have at least 3 acres of panels on building roofs or as shade canopies on parking lots. Chevron Energy Services is now installing a 1-MW system at East Los Angeles College, and two other LACCD campuses already have small systems that will be augmented by the 1-MW systems. The East Los Angeles College system will be financed and owned by MMA Renewable Ventures. According to Eisenberg, the college will pay 13 cents per kilowatt-hour once the system is built and operating, rather than SCE’s current average price of 21 cents per kilo-watt hour. Under the next contract, this system will be augmented to provide enough power for the whole campus. The San Jose Unified School District announced in July it was partnering with Chevron Energy Solutions and Bank of America to establish a solar power and en-
of America will utilize. The school district expects to save $15 million just from the first-phase installations, representing about one-third of current energy costs at the four high schools, over the 25-year life of the solar systems. The district expects to pay $14.2 million for the power over the next 25 years. Ty Williams, San Jose School District’s school construction manager, told the San Jose Mercury News if the school district had borrowed the $18.1 million to build the first phase, it would have ended up paying more than $30 million, including interest. For its part, Bank of America has committed $20 billion to support the growth of environmentally sustainable business activity to address global climate change.
WWW.DISTRIBUTEDENERGY.COM • 49
Aesthetics
Because of it weather, Spanish Bay was not considered ideal for a golf course—not ideal, that is, until Tom Watson and friends decided to build a genuine, Scottish links-style course.
26 • O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
and More By Frank Gardner
W
hen Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino anchored off the windswept white beach and dunes between the Carmel and Monterey Bays more than 400 years ago, he could not have envisioned the environmental ebb and flow of the place now called Spanish Bay. There was no 17-Mile Drive, no Asilomar Conference Center, no city of Pacific Grove. He did see a spectacular length of beach, offshore rocks hosting scores of sea lions, a dense and primeval forest, and, undoubtedly, sea otters frolicking in the kelp beds. Monterey Bay made a much safer harbor, and, almost 170 years later, an excellent site for a fort (the Presidio), piers and customs operations for Monterey, the capital of Alta California. The winds, waves, and sudden squalls common to Spanish Bay left commercial development largely to the early 20th century, when Samuel F.B. Morse, a distant cousin of the inventor of the telegraph, began to mine the dunes there for sand. The rusting remains of the conveyors and other equipment from the operation were still there in the early 1970s. Morse was a founder and early manager of the Del Monte Properties Co., which, through several incarnations, became the Pebble Beach Co. Considered the oldest golf course west of the Mississippi, the links at the Del Monte Lodge were built in 1897; the world-famous and scenic course at Pebble Beach was built in 1919. Because of it weather, however, Spanish Bay was not considered ideal for a golf course. Not ideal, that is, until five-time British Open champion Tom Watson, along with former United States Golf Association president Frank “Sandy” Tatum and noted course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. decided to
build a genuine, Scottish links-style course. Proximity to the ocean, the sand dunes, and the changeable, often-blustery weather made Spanish Bay the perfect location for their project. First, though, all the derelict equipment had to be hauled off, thousands of tons of sand brought back in to re-create the dunes that would have been found here before Morse’s mining operation, and many native plant species reintroduced. It is somewhat ironic that all that restoration brought immediate responses from the local environmental community, but the builders, the Pebble Beach Co., and the golf course staff worked closely with the Del Monte Forest Foundation and other concerned environmental groups, set aside large protected habitat areas off-limits to golfers and walkers, and earned one of the first Audubon Certified Sanctuary designations. Nowadays, Jeff Steen, the superintendent at The Links at Spanish Bay, maintains the golf course, which has been consistently rated at the highest level of resort golf courses in the United States and which offers a genuine feel of what a golfer would experience in Scotland. In fact, the Links won the Gold Medal for 2006, awarded by Golf Magazine, and the Inn and Links have earned prestigious rankings from such publications as Mobil Travel Guide and Condé Nast Traveler. Like the overwhelming majority of superintendents who are members of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, Steen is committed to the preservation of the environment and is justifiably proud of the course he maintains. Along with the dunes, fescue, and other native grasses that give the Links its special feel, the wetlands are also part of the preservation effort. One of these gives the par-3 eighth hole its name, Marsh Corner. It literally sits at the corner of the golf course and requires a challenging shot over thick growths of reeds and the edge of a large, open pond in the midst of the fen. In the early days of the course, it was necessary to
www.onsitewater.com
trim the tops of the reeds to allow visibility of the green from the tee. “The wetlands are beautiful and provide plenty of native habitat, but they also act as a vital filtering mechanism,” Steen says. He points out that no chemicals are used in the pond, in part because of the Audubon Sanctuary status. Recently, Steen became concerned about persistent eutrophic conditions in the water. He knew that oxygen and movement were the solutions to stagnant conditions, and had used diffused air systems to good effect in the past, so he called on Mike McGee of EPAeration Inc., and his assistant, Rich Dennis, a recent graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in environmental technology. That company also has its bottom-laid, fine-bubble aeration systems operating at Spyglass Hill, another of the spectacular Pebble Beach courses. “We wanted to get back to the basics and get some oxygen into the water there,” Steen said. “I felt diffused aeration was the best option.” The pond itself is approximately 200 feet long and 150 feet wide, with the wetlands covering an area roughly equal. However, it has an average depth of only 5 feet and provides habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife, which raise the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the water. “Determining the system requirements at Marsh Corner was not a simple calculation,” said McGee, president and general manager of the San Luis Obispo, CA-based EPAeration. “We never offer a one-size-fitsall solution, because we have to be sure that the system is adequate to meet the BOD and circulation needs of the water body. Because it is shallow, no aeration system can work at peak efficiency, so that also played a role in our determinations.”
A piper strolls the grounds around the Inn and golf course at Spanish Bay.
EPAeration systems use specially developed diffusion tubing, keel-weighted to sit right on top of the sludge layer. The tubing features surgically cut slits at regular intervals on the top. About 2 psi of air flow is required to open the slits, which control the size and rate of rise of the air bubbles. This also ensures that the same quantity of air is available the entire length of the tubing and that there is a laminar (without turbulence) flow of bubbles from the bottom to the surface. The idea of subsurface aeration is to move water molecules from the benthic (lowest) layer in a body of water to the surface without disturbing the sludge. That’s because the sludge generally contains organic materials, metals like iron and manganese, and chemicals from runoff, like phosphates and hydrocarbons, all of which provide nutrients to various life forms, not all of them desirable. Roiling it would release these nutrients into the water column, which could result in nuisance algae blooms. “That’s why we only use diffusion systems which provide a laminar flow,” Mike said. Although aeration systems can provide oxygen transfer to the water, the greatest amount of oxygenation takes place at the surface. It’s not the O in H2O, the water molecule itself, but dissolved oxygen (DO) that’s being added. What often happens to sequestered bodies of water, such as golf course lakes, is that there’s no natural movement of water from one level to another. Thermal stratification, Rising aeration bubbles form lines in the which happens when there’s a 3°C difference pond at Marsh Corner. November/December 2006
between the surface layer and the benthic, prevents any natural convection. Increasing the dissolved oxygen levels encourages the beneficial life forms to consume available nutrients while denying those nutrients to nuisance algae. Secondarily, increasing the DO levels to above 2 ppm prevents what is called an “anoxic release” of nutrients from the sludge to the water column. In the case of the Spanish Bay installation, it was determined that a single aeration/ ozonation unit with two 1/3-horsepower compressors and 500 feet of aeration tubing should be adequate. This system is estimated to “turn” (from bottom to top and back) the water in the Marsh Corner pond 20 times a day, a little more than double the necessary turn for the average golf course lake. The installation of the aeration system is the primary step in bringing the lake and marsh back to health, but raising the DO levels at the bottom will encourage the microbes, as well. In all likelihood, golfers and visitors will not even notice the subtle lines of bubbles on the lake surface at Marsh Corner. Just like the course and the magnificent Inn at Spanish Bay, everything blends into the natural setting. Except, that is, for the sound of the skirling bagpipes each evening, as a kilted piper strolls the grounds of a place restored to its rightful glory. Even Vizcaino would probably approve. OWT Frank Gardner is a freelance writer and business consultant based in Arroyo Grande, CA.
O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
•
27
Aesthetics
Because of it weather, Spanish Bay was not considered ideal for a golf course—not ideal, that is, until Tom Watson and friends decided to build a genuine, Scottish links-style course.
26 • O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
and More By Frank Gardner
W
hen Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino anchored off the windswept white beach and dunes between the Carmel and Monterey Bays more than 400 years ago, he could not have envisioned the environmental ebb and flow of the place now called Spanish Bay. There was no 17-Mile Drive, no Asilomar Conference Center, no city of Pacific Grove. He did see a spectacular length of beach, offshore rocks hosting scores of sea lions, a dense and primeval forest, and, undoubtedly, sea otters frolicking in the kelp beds. Monterey Bay made a much safer harbor, and, almost 170 years later, an excellent site for a fort (the Presidio), piers and customs operations for Monterey, the capital of Alta California. The winds, waves, and sudden squalls common to Spanish Bay left commercial development largely to the early 20th century, when Samuel F.B. Morse, a distant cousin of the inventor of the telegraph, began to mine the dunes there for sand. The rusting remains of the conveyors and other equipment from the operation were still there in the early 1970s. Morse was a founder and early manager of the Del Monte Properties Co., which, through several incarnations, became the Pebble Beach Co. Considered the oldest golf course west of the Mississippi, the links at the Del Monte Lodge were built in 1897; the world-famous and scenic course at Pebble Beach was built in 1919. Because of it weather, however, Spanish Bay was not considered ideal for a golf course. Not ideal, that is, until five-time British Open champion Tom Watson, along with former United States Golf Association president Frank “Sandy” Tatum and noted course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. decided to
build a genuine, Scottish links-style course. Proximity to the ocean, the sand dunes, and the changeable, often-blustery weather made Spanish Bay the perfect location for their project. First, though, all the derelict equipment had to be hauled off, thousands of tons of sand brought back in to re-create the dunes that would have been found here before Morse’s mining operation, and many native plant species reintroduced. It is somewhat ironic that all that restoration brought immediate responses from the local environmental community, but the builders, the Pebble Beach Co., and the golf course staff worked closely with the Del Monte Forest Foundation and other concerned environmental groups, set aside large protected habitat areas off-limits to golfers and walkers, and earned one of the first Audubon Certified Sanctuary designations. Nowadays, Jeff Steen, the superintendent at The Links at Spanish Bay, maintains the golf course, which has been consistently rated at the highest level of resort golf courses in the United States and which offers a genuine feel of what a golfer would experience in Scotland. In fact, the Links won the Gold Medal for 2006, awarded by Golf Magazine, and the Inn and Links have earned prestigious rankings from such publications as Mobil Travel Guide and Condé Nast Traveler. Like the overwhelming majority of superintendents who are members of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, Steen is committed to the preservation of the environment and is justifiably proud of the course he maintains. Along with the dunes, fescue, and other native grasses that give the Links its special feel, the wetlands are also part of the preservation effort. One of these gives the par-3 eighth hole its name, Marsh Corner. It literally sits at the corner of the golf course and requires a challenging shot over thick growths of reeds and the edge of a large, open pond in the midst of the fen. In the early days of the course, it was necessary to
www.onsitewater.com
trim the tops of the reeds to allow visibility of the green from the tee. “The wetlands are beautiful and provide plenty of native habitat, but they also act as a vital filtering mechanism,” Steen says. He points out that no chemicals are used in the pond, in part because of the Audubon Sanctuary status. Recently, Steen became concerned about persistent eutrophic conditions in the water. He knew that oxygen and movement were the solutions to stagnant conditions, and had used diffused air systems to good effect in the past, so he called on Mike McGee of EPAeration Inc., and his assistant, Rich Dennis, a recent graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in environmental technology. That company also has its bottom-laid, fine-bubble aeration systems operating at Spyglass Hill, another of the spectacular Pebble Beach courses. “We wanted to get back to the basics and get some oxygen into the water there,” Steen said. “I felt diffused aeration was the best option.” The pond itself is approximately 200 feet long and 150 feet wide, with the wetlands covering an area roughly equal. However, it has an average depth of only 5 feet and provides habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife, which raise the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the water. “Determining the system requirements at Marsh Corner was not a simple calculation,” said McGee, president and general manager of the San Luis Obispo, CA-based EPAeration. “We never offer a one-size-fitsall solution, because we have to be sure that the system is adequate to meet the BOD and circulation needs of the water body. Because it is shallow, no aeration system can work at peak efficiency, so that also played a role in our determinations.”
A piper strolls the grounds around the Inn and golf course at Spanish Bay.
EPAeration systems use specially developed diffusion tubing, keel-weighted to sit right on top of the sludge layer. The tubing features surgically cut slits at regular intervals on the top. About 2 psi of air flow is required to open the slits, which control the size and rate of rise of the air bubbles. This also ensures that the same quantity of air is available the entire length of the tubing and that there is a laminar (without turbulence) flow of bubbles from the bottom to the surface. The idea of subsurface aeration is to move water molecules from the benthic (lowest) layer in a body of water to the surface without disturbing the sludge. That’s because the sludge generally contains organic materials, metals like iron and manganese, and chemicals from runoff, like phosphates and hydrocarbons, all of which provide nutrients to various life forms, not all of them desirable. Roiling it would release these nutrients into the water column, which could result in nuisance algae blooms. “That’s why we only use diffusion systems which provide a laminar flow,” Mike said. Although aeration systems can provide oxygen transfer to the water, the greatest amount of oxygenation takes place at the surface. It’s not the O in H2O, the water molecule itself, but dissolved oxygen (DO) that’s being added. What often happens to sequestered bodies of water, such as golf course lakes, is that there’s no natural movement of water from one level to another. Thermal stratification, Rising aeration bubbles form lines in the which happens when there’s a 3°C difference pond at Marsh Corner. November/December 2006
between the surface layer and the benthic, prevents any natural convection. Increasing the dissolved oxygen levels encourages the beneficial life forms to consume available nutrients while denying those nutrients to nuisance algae. Secondarily, increasing the DO levels to above 2 ppm prevents what is called an “anoxic release” of nutrients from the sludge to the water column. In the case of the Spanish Bay installation, it was determined that a single aeration/ ozonation unit with two 1/3-horsepower compressors and 500 feet of aeration tubing should be adequate. This system is estimated to “turn” (from bottom to top and back) the water in the Marsh Corner pond 20 times a day, a little more than double the necessary turn for the average golf course lake. The installation of the aeration system is the primary step in bringing the lake and marsh back to health, but raising the DO levels at the bottom will encourage the microbes, as well. In all likelihood, golfers and visitors will not even notice the subtle lines of bubbles on the lake surface at Marsh Corner. Just like the course and the magnificent Inn at Spanish Bay, everything blends into the natural setting. Except, that is, for the sound of the skirling bagpipes each evening, as a kilted piper strolls the grounds of a place restored to its rightful glory. Even Vizcaino would probably approve. OWT Frank Gardner is a freelance writer and business consultant based in Arroyo Grande, CA.
O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
•
27
order to know where to look. “This is a huge issue,” says Frick, “much more complicated than most people can imagine. It is certainly easier not to place PPCPs in the hydrological cycle than to have them go in, dissolve and then to worry about having to remove them. But from a drug enforcement stand-
Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products:
different substances, things get even more complicated.
We use personal care products every day, yet most of us rarely wonder what happens to these substances after the shower is turned off or the toilet flushed.
A
Early USGS Studies Of PPCP Concentrations In 1999 the US Geological Survey did a small study with the CDC near Atlanta, GA, to determine the health impact from PPCPs, according to Elizabeth Frick, USGS hydrologist in Georgia. Effects studied included
32 • O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
which to search for the compounds.” Though the USGS knew this could definitely be a groundwater issue, it decided to first concentrate on streams, coming up with a cross-country network to study. “With our limited funding, our plan was to approach the so-called worst-case streams, to begin to see if problems existed,” says Kolpin. “We really hit the ground running. Research started within months of our initial decision to study the issue. Things have
By Pete Hildebrandt those on effluent downstream of wastewater treatment plants as well as treated effluent itself. In addition to this study, the USGS also conducted a study in conjunction with the National Park Service along the Chattahoochee River. Though the emphasis of the study was microbial, they also looked at some wastewater tracers at base flow and high flow. Studies came in 2000 and 2001, followed by studies of drinking water intakes in 2002 and upstream major effluent discharge and a proximal at a distal site downstream. “Ongoing, we have a huge number of wastewater tracer samples that have been collected for a project with the city of Atlanta, looking at what’s in the stream. None of the sites are downstream of treated effluent, though some are downstream of CSOs [combined sewer overflows],” says Frick. “Initially, in 1999, people started looking for data on PPCP occurrence. The CDC was interested in looking at treated drinking water. Now we’ve started to narrow things down to streams, groundwater or drinking water intake.” The National Water Quality Assessment (NWQA) program has not yet touched pharmaceuticals or antibiotics, according to Frick. But they have done the organic
only continued to grow and evolve in this area and to broaden, both the look for compounds and the places they’re found.” Groundwater studies followed the stream studies, and in 2001 Kolpin’s group studied the variety of sources for drinking water, and the raw water entering plants for treatment. “We’re not quite to the level of publishing a journal article on our findings yet, but that’s coming,” says Kolpin. “Our ongoing research studies the movement of PPCPs once they’re discharged into the environment, as well as effects. We’re trying to look at this as a holistic source-to-receptor type
when you find a cocktail of many
An Issue of Growing Concern for OWT
t the end of the last decade a new acronym appeared: PPCP. PPCPs, or pharmaceuticals and personal care products, encompass an extensive number of chemical substances, including prescription and overthe-counter therapeutic drugs, fragrances, cosmetics, sunscreen agents, diagnostic agents, nutraceuticals, and biopharmaceuticals, among many others. We use PPCPs every day, yet most of us rarely wonder what happens to these substances after the shower is turned off or the toilet flushed. But in the last 10 years the issue has emerged as a concern for the EPA and the USGS. According to the EPA, the conventional priority pollutants had most of our attention for the previous 30 years. The accelerating development of new PPCPs and prescribing of drugs has served to increase PPCP prevalence in the environment.
certain pharmaceuticals and other types of compounds were showing up in European water sources. “This was a wake-up call for us, to realize we had no clue about what the environmental currents for many of these compounds were in the US,” says Dana Kolpin, research hydrologist with the USGS in Iowa City, IA. “One of the outcomes of that workshop was that some funding was set aside to start looking at pharmaceutical compounds. A number of chemists decided which set of compounds they would study while I worked on coming up with a network in
wastewater tracers in a series of source water quality assessment studies. “There are many of us working on this issue,” says Frick. “But some, like me, are working on it regionally. Our goal is to get a good cross-section of the various types of water treatment. The catch is that the influents are different; this makes an apples-to-apples comparison very difficult because different utilities do have differing source waters. “The whole gist of things is, whatever humans use, some percent of that gets returned to the environment. Though some of the them are referred to as ‘emerging contaminants’, many are not new compounds. It’s simply that now we have developed different lab methods enabling us to analyze them at the low concentrations at which they occur. They’re not new, but our ability to look for them is new.” The hydrophilic compounds dissolve in the water and hydrophobic tend to accumulate in animal tissue and sediment. But you must know the chemistry behind them in
www.onsitewater.com
point, things are extremely regulated and complicated; I personally feel placing pharmaceuticals in the water system is one of the worst things we can do, but the other options are nearly as problematic. In a hospital system, with everything well-regulated and controlled, recycling and reuse works much better; we’re not all in the hospital, though.” In September 1998, a small group of USGS scientists had an internal workshop to discuss which scientific questions would take us into the next century. At that time papers coming out of Europe indicated
January/February 2007
research, even though, early on, things were heavy on the methods and occurrence side. Those things still continue, but we’re also trying to expand and go at the issue from a broad range of angles and questions.” Since the USGS is a non-regulatory agency, its data feeds into the EPA, where it is used to determine if these compounds need to be added into any types of regulatory aspects in terms of not discharging or making sure removals are down to certain prescribed levels in treated waste. Things haven’t reached that point yet, according to Kolpin. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these compounds are added to a regula-
Many treatment plants were built before PPCPs became part of the equation.
O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
•
33
order to know where to look. “This is a huge issue,” says Frick, “much more complicated than most people can imagine. It is certainly easier not to place PPCPs in the hydrological cycle than to have them go in, dissolve and then to worry about having to remove them. But from a drug enforcement stand-
Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products:
different substances, things get even more complicated.
We use personal care products every day, yet most of us rarely wonder what happens to these substances after the shower is turned off or the toilet flushed.
A
Early USGS Studies Of PPCP Concentrations In 1999 the US Geological Survey did a small study with the CDC near Atlanta, GA, to determine the health impact from PPCPs, according to Elizabeth Frick, USGS hydrologist in Georgia. Effects studied included
32 • O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
which to search for the compounds.” Though the USGS knew this could definitely be a groundwater issue, it decided to first concentrate on streams, coming up with a cross-country network to study. “With our limited funding, our plan was to approach the so-called worst-case streams, to begin to see if problems existed,” says Kolpin. “We really hit the ground running. Research started within months of our initial decision to study the issue. Things have
By Pete Hildebrandt those on effluent downstream of wastewater treatment plants as well as treated effluent itself. In addition to this study, the USGS also conducted a study in conjunction with the National Park Service along the Chattahoochee River. Though the emphasis of the study was microbial, they also looked at some wastewater tracers at base flow and high flow. Studies came in 2000 and 2001, followed by studies of drinking water intakes in 2002 and upstream major effluent discharge and a proximal at a distal site downstream. “Ongoing, we have a huge number of wastewater tracer samples that have been collected for a project with the city of Atlanta, looking at what’s in the stream. None of the sites are downstream of treated effluent, though some are downstream of CSOs [combined sewer overflows],” says Frick. “Initially, in 1999, people started looking for data on PPCP occurrence. The CDC was interested in looking at treated drinking water. Now we’ve started to narrow things down to streams, groundwater or drinking water intake.” The National Water Quality Assessment (NWQA) program has not yet touched pharmaceuticals or antibiotics, according to Frick. But they have done the organic
only continued to grow and evolve in this area and to broaden, both the look for compounds and the places they’re found.” Groundwater studies followed the stream studies, and in 2001 Kolpin’s group studied the variety of sources for drinking water, and the raw water entering plants for treatment. “We’re not quite to the level of publishing a journal article on our findings yet, but that’s coming,” says Kolpin. “Our ongoing research studies the movement of PPCPs once they’re discharged into the environment, as well as effects. We’re trying to look at this as a holistic source-to-receptor type
when you find a cocktail of many
An Issue of Growing Concern for OWT
t the end of the last decade a new acronym appeared: PPCP. PPCPs, or pharmaceuticals and personal care products, encompass an extensive number of chemical substances, including prescription and overthe-counter therapeutic drugs, fragrances, cosmetics, sunscreen agents, diagnostic agents, nutraceuticals, and biopharmaceuticals, among many others. We use PPCPs every day, yet most of us rarely wonder what happens to these substances after the shower is turned off or the toilet flushed. But in the last 10 years the issue has emerged as a concern for the EPA and the USGS. According to the EPA, the conventional priority pollutants had most of our attention for the previous 30 years. The accelerating development of new PPCPs and prescribing of drugs has served to increase PPCP prevalence in the environment.
certain pharmaceuticals and other types of compounds were showing up in European water sources. “This was a wake-up call for us, to realize we had no clue about what the environmental currents for many of these compounds were in the US,” says Dana Kolpin, research hydrologist with the USGS in Iowa City, IA. “One of the outcomes of that workshop was that some funding was set aside to start looking at pharmaceutical compounds. A number of chemists decided which set of compounds they would study while I worked on coming up with a network in
wastewater tracers in a series of source water quality assessment studies. “There are many of us working on this issue,” says Frick. “But some, like me, are working on it regionally. Our goal is to get a good cross-section of the various types of water treatment. The catch is that the influents are different; this makes an apples-to-apples comparison very difficult because different utilities do have differing source waters. “The whole gist of things is, whatever humans use, some percent of that gets returned to the environment. Though some of the them are referred to as ‘emerging contaminants’, many are not new compounds. It’s simply that now we have developed different lab methods enabling us to analyze them at the low concentrations at which they occur. They’re not new, but our ability to look for them is new.” The hydrophilic compounds dissolve in the water and hydrophobic tend to accumulate in animal tissue and sediment. But you must know the chemistry behind them in
www.onsitewater.com
point, things are extremely regulated and complicated; I personally feel placing pharmaceuticals in the water system is one of the worst things we can do, but the other options are nearly as problematic. In a hospital system, with everything well-regulated and controlled, recycling and reuse works much better; we’re not all in the hospital, though.” In September 1998, a small group of USGS scientists had an internal workshop to discuss which scientific questions would take us into the next century. At that time papers coming out of Europe indicated
January/February 2007
research, even though, early on, things were heavy on the methods and occurrence side. Those things still continue, but we’re also trying to expand and go at the issue from a broad range of angles and questions.” Since the USGS is a non-regulatory agency, its data feeds into the EPA, where it is used to determine if these compounds need to be added into any types of regulatory aspects in terms of not discharging or making sure removals are down to certain prescribed levels in treated waste. Things haven’t reached that point yet, according to Kolpin. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these compounds are added to a regula-
Many treatment plants were built before PPCPs became part of the equation.
O NSITE W ATER T REATMENT
•
33