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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
These two books are the perfect starting place to help you get to grips with one of the most vitally important aspects of our society - our homes and living environment.

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Products: Decentralised Sewage Treatment - Good or Bad Idea?

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    • CommentAuthorwastetech
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2010
     
    Should the UK adopt Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems (DEWATS) instead of centralised municipal sewage works for it's new 'ECO' towns?
    DEWATS would mean that each house, or group of houses would have its own sewage treatment plant. The only effluent leaving every house would be clean water and the risk of major pollution incidents would be completely avoided.
    DEWATS is being promoted all over the World - apart from the UK.
    As much of the river pollution is caused by failing centralised sewage works and almost 80% of the cost of sewage works is in the pipework to transport it to a centralised location, is DEWATS a good or bad ideology?
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2010
     
    Interesting idea. I'd never heard of it and a quick google appears to show limited resources and a focus on developing countries. Are there some good resources that deal, among general issues, with its application in developed countries that have existing sewage systems?

    Thanks, Dave
    • CommentAuthorjon
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2010 edited
     
    As much of the river pollution is caused by failing centralised sewage works and almost 80% of the cost of sewage works is in the pipework to transport it to a centralised location

    Lack of investment in infrastructure is the reason for the above.

    If we as a society believe that densification of population is appropriate, then centralised disposal makes a lot of sense. Currently, all our planning guidance is geared to densification of population, therefore centralised treatment makes sense.
    • CommentAuthorTuna
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2010
     
    The trouble with a decentralised model is that there are many more points of failure.

    A centralised treatment plant should be very well maintained and carefully monitored. Obviously the potential for a nasty incident is there, but the likelihood should be pretty low.

    By contrast, if you give over control of sewage treatment to individuals or small groups, while the chance of a major incident is lowered, the chances are also much higher that some of the treatment plants will be running below standard safety levels.

    So do you want clean waterways that may very occasionally become polluted, or slightly dirty waterways that are unlikely to ever be completely clean?

    Or, to put it another way, would you trust your neigbour not to dump sewage on your doorstep?
    • CommentAuthorchuckey
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2010
     
    If you were building some houses on the outskirts of a town then bolting the new sewerage system on to the existing would seem to be the best idea. If you were building a new village several miles from an existing town then it should have its own sewerage system and normally has.
    I don't understand what problem you think we have here?
    Frank (local septic tank)
    • CommentAuthorwastetech
    • CommentTimeFeb 21st 2010
     
    Much of the pollution of our rivers is caused by failing and undersized municipal sewage treatment works. Even the Environment Agency agrees on this and although the Water Companies are fined on a reguler basis (not enough for the damage they do) it doesn't help to restore the environment.

    They haven't enough money to undertake all the repairs and extensions to the works that are required to upgrade the current systems to produce water of the same quality that private individual sewage treatment plants have to achieve by Law. In fact 'Surfers against Sewage' made the Water Company bosses do the 'Walk of Shame' last month when they all attended a meeting to try to 'water down' the standards that they have to reach even further!
    Visit http://www.crystaltanks.co.uk/news_42016.html for details.

    Why do you put your trust in companies that constantly fail us all when it comes to protecting our environment?

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