Effluent in Soils

that is the same as 8" of heavy rain/day for four days. Suggest you get an eco friendly soap phenol free made of saponified animal fats instead of detergents and it should not be a problem. Any soap residue will feed soil bacteria very nicely and the gravel sand will absorb this flow with little difficulty as long as you use dispersal mats to avoid gully cutting

soaps like this are all over the earth mother sites.

regulatory bodies will be the problem as they will work with that flow every day for a year and forbid it.

I am sure I can design a wastewater system that can handle the flow by simply adding several more laterals and incorporating a pressure distribution system, but it seems so overkill considering the event lasts only four days.

My concern is how long it will take before biomat compromises the infiltration rate and therefore the treatment. I'm wondering if biomat is even going to be a problem since the event lasts only four days, i.e. the soil has 361 days to recover.

As for regulatory bodies, they are aware of the situation, that is why the event organizers have engaged us to develop a sustainable solution. We have engineered a large number of wastewater systems in the past, but this one is unique.

I am also considering a constructed wetland and incorporating other wastewater sources, sort of a catch all solution.

I am very curious about this 4 day event that produces 140m² of shower waste. Could I trouble you for driving directions? It is a co-ed event, no?

cr3

Instead of dispersing the untreated water into the soil, we run the water through lagoons where milfoil, hydrilla and duckweed absorb the nutrients, then use the plant material as feedstock for making fuel ethanol from the plant polysaccharides (sugars, starches, hemicellulose and cellulose, among others). Tailwater has good quality for irrigation or soil dispersal. Hydrilla will also absorb heavy metals from the water. I will answer e-mails to oertg@aol.com

192 liters per meter ^2 per day?

milo

Wow, 7.6 inch a day for 4 straight days is equivalent to alot of rainfall. What are the compounds in the BOD? Are any going to degrade groundwater? Waht is the EC/TDS of the wastewater? Fluvial gravel deposits? is there shallow groundwater? is there base flow to a stream ? What does your State EPA require for treatment of such a discharge to ground water or streams? Generally, gravel s that have not been used consistently in a treatment system will have no bacterial scum layer, it is just a fast route to dump the wastewater into the underlying groundwater, unless there is continuous impeding layer (aquitard) between the gravel and the groundwater, then it is a slower way to groundwater. Also, gravels are not fine enough to filter TSS, soil will filter TSS rapidly though. Imagine making coffee with a filter that has holes the size of your finger in it. It is much better to dump wastewater on some agricultural fields above the floodplain and let it react with a well established rhyzosphere.

The soil profiles have been measured and recorded at four locations within the dispersal area. Although there is some minor variation in depth and thickness the soils are primarily gravel with silt and clay lenses, this is typical of post glacial fluvial deposits of which there are many in this region.

My concern is eutrophication at the infiltrative surface due to the high loading rate of phosphate rich effluent. I have recently discussed this problem with a soils expert and he believes eutrophication is very unlikely because the flooding lasts only four days.

In some latin countries they do not filter waste water, they have used fish very effectively. I believe they built three or more ponds or reservoirs, one where the initial breakdown of waste matter happens, the others have the fish and the water gets recycled (farming ), there are several fish that handle waste matter, catfish, carp, tilapia among others.

I pretty much agree with Saca's advise .
you should build about two 27 m3 ponds , let the waste water settle at the first one and pump the water in recirculation and spray it into the second one to get as much air contact you can. then, instead of fish pond at the outlet, you should use some biological filter , or maybe sand loaded with microorganisms, or wetland.

The problem with biological filter is that it should kept wet and fed all year round to make it ready for an immediate 4 day use, thus you got to feed the micro organisms with waste water.

You didn't bring enough information about the location to make exact decisions.

Hope this helped.

Wouldn't Ag land with a healthy rhizosphere comprise a very active biological filter? Plus it would already be active if the land was being farmed prior to the waste disposal. Plus i believe eutrophication from phosphate is not such a big problem for agricultural field is you use enough land for a agronomic application rate. If not ag land use some shallow fields with a high density of plants. Obviously the wastewater should be pre-treated with settling and separation to remove excess solids, though this generally requires relatively small impondments. This is a method similar to how many food processing plantsolder small municipal wastewater plants, and dairy farm dispose of wastewater.

Sorry, I don't understand your answer. At the bottom line what do you suggest ?