more "natural" area = more areas where water is being cleaned by natural systems = cleaner water & less money that humans ultimately need to pay for treating water.
Topic 2: Sewers: Throughout the world, the use of sewers for the transport and removal of water waste ranges from zero treatment ("pipe into the river") to multi-stage treatment techniques that discharge water that is actually higher quality that the surrounding environmental water.
Topic 3: Though WWTP are like snowflakes in that no two are exactly alike, there are certain key treatments stages that need to be addressed at each facility:
0. Pretreatment: screening (removal) of large object
1. Primary treatment: settling tanks in which solids are removed through gravitational settling
2. Secondary treatment: aerated tanks in which disolved organic compounds are removed through controlled biological reactions involving microbes
3. Tertiary treatment: any post secondary treatment- could involve filtration, removal of P &/or N, et cetera- should involved disinfection in order to kill microbes from the secondary treatment stage and from the original waste.
4. Discharge: into a river, ocean, irrigation recycling program, or pumped into the ground.
Topic 4: Drugging our waters: The four big issues raised by the article were:
1. bioactivity of drugs and hormones or chemicals that mimic hormones
2. synergy between very small amounts of many different drugs in drinking water
3. Since this is a relatively new problem, there is not much research on the effects of ingesting drugs or combination of drugs in very small dosages (and certainly no research on the long term effects).
4. Our current system of treating waste water is inadequate in removing complex compounds such as the the pharmaceutical products and byproducts that were discussed in the article.
5. Removal of these compounds is possible using current technology; but, is would be really expensive.
You should also be familiar with the solutions for the problem of drugs in our waters discussed in the article.
Topic 5: Cocaine in Italy's rivers: According to Zuccato, 2005, the people of the Po river watershed (most of Northern Italy) are using 2.7 times more cocaine that previous (official) estimates. You should be familiar with the methods used in this study, why these sampling methods were important, and what the major implications of the study are.
On Monday, we will talk about LUST, and desalination treatment. Please read:
Water agencies debate desalination a shourt article in the San Fransisco Chronicle from February 15, 2009 by Kelly Zito and
‘Desalination to cover all our water needs by 2011’ a short article on water shortages in Cyprus from March 2, 2010 by Sebastian Heller
Slides shown in lecture today have been posted as a .pdf to Sakai.
The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.
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