The advanced treatment of residential wastewater is typically accomplished with individual NSF certified treatment systems.  However, limiting residential treatment to individual on-lot systems can result in less effective nutrient removal and high capital & life cycle costs per home.  These undesirable characteristics can be eliminated through the use of residential cluster systems that collect and treat wastewater for entire communities.  Cluster System benefits include: low capital and life cycle costs per home, reduced operation costs per home, small footprint and enhanced treatment capability for nutrient reduction.

Commercial wastewater is usually highly concentrated in organic content and complicated by sanitary routines and house keeping habits that shorten the expected life of the soil disposal system.  Advanced wastewater treatment will preserve the disposal system indefinitely and often represents a one to three year return on investment for commercial facilities.

Institutional facilities typically have larger wastewater flows with lower organic concentration than commercial waste streams.  However, some institutions such as schools may have exceptionally high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen and very erratic peak flows.  It is critical to understand the institution’s lifestyle and sanitary routines when designing a treatment system.

Small and rural communities generally find it difficult to assemble the resources to develop a traditional wastewater infrastructure.  Yet, without infrastructure it is difficult to enhance property values and economic development.  Decentralized wastewater treatment systems represent a low cost, low impact and high benefit solution.  Employing modular systems whose processes are natural and require little management is a strategy for success that has the support of Rural Community Assistance Programs (RCAP) and Rural Utility Service (RUS) offices.

 

Piperton, TN is a fast growing suburb of Memphis. Initially the town had no wastewater infrastructure. With its new exit off the interstate, town planners had to figure out how to keep up with the rapid growth rate and how to provide cost effective municipal infrastructure for Piperton's citizens. They elected to build a distributed network of Bioclere systems that are centrally managed through an internet based telemetry control system. The plants range from 20,000 to 80,000 gpd and allow the town to construct municipal infrastructure at a low cost when and where they need it.

 

Littered with failing septic systems, The 45 square mile US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay needed to remediate 70 sites that were polluting the bay. They explored pumping the waste to both of the two large treatment facilities on the base but ultimately determined it would be more cost effective from a capital and O&M perspective to distribute their treatment infrastructure. The Navy built seven systems ranging from 3,000 to 100,000 gpd. Their new distributed network of systems has a total capacity of 240,000 gpd and costs less to maintain than their central plants.

 

Cave Springs, AR is located in the northwestern part of the state which is home to corporations such as Wal-Mart and JB Hunt as well as a new regional airport. Faced with rapid growth and environmentally sensitive conditions, one developer had the vision to form a public/private partnership that funded a state of the art wastewater treatment system. The system is managed by the municipality and the treated water is reused for irrigation on a golf course. With a total capacity of 412,000 gpd the system collects, treats and reuses water from 1,495 homes and two commercial downtown areas.