Name Change

With the proposed annexation into Cayce and their interest in using treatment wetlands, we think our wetlands are more properly called The Congaree Wetlands. We are putting the new name on the top right now. The web address will stay the same for awhile because that is where people find us. We will change it too in the future. Thanks.
The environmental and economic justifications for the wetlands remain the same, Cayce just has less wastewater that they discharge into the Congaree, so the initial project and savings will be smaller -- if it goes ahead.

Slides and a Better Picture of the Total Property

A couple of weeks ago Mark Sees, noted biologist and manager of the Orlando Easterly Wetlands, came to Columbia to speak to the Sierra Club, neighborhood groups, and City Council about treatment wetlands in general and the particular experiences of Orlando.
We were part of the discussion with the Sierra Club and got our first feedback on our blog. We had two main requests: post our slides from the presentation and make our overall map "enlargeable". Neither of those is real easy for novice bloggers, but a recent repeat of one request by Dr. Tufford, has spurred us to figure out a work-around. First the easy one: attached below is the same picture as our "Total Property" picture. We believe that by posting it here too, you can click on it and enlarge it. A whole Power Point slide show is taking more thought (the "convert it to Flash" method does not really preserve it). Thanks

Swamp of Dreams

Joey Holleman of The State made a trip to the Augusta Wetlands and wrote an article on his visit and what he found. He thinks it makes a good place to visit. Thousands of visitors apparently agree because they go every year. We had the same impression when we went.
There are a few pictures in the earlier posts on this blog. These wetlands treat their effluent in all the ways they planned, plus a few more.
The founder and President of the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy, mentioned in the article, has just been named to lead the environmental efforts at the Clemson University Restoration Institute. He will be professor of biological sciences there, but will retain his role at the Natural Sciences Academy. He is a special resource for this state and a great catch for Clemson.

All This and a Reduction in Greenhouse Gasses, too?

We know that wetlands are cheaper, mean lower sewer rates, do the treatment job better, provide park settings for people and natural habitat for animals, and provide research opportunities for research universities. Is it possible they reduce greenhouse gasses too?
Columbia has committed to Cool Cities, a Sierra Club program to address global warming on a city-by-city basis. Step 1 of Cool Cities “sets the goal of reducing citywide global warming carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.” Mayor Coble is now driving a Prius, a hybrid vehicle that uses 25% of the gasoline of an SUV or 50% of the gasoline of a normal small car.
These wetlands will be a bigger help (and, if you count the fact that they save money, they will cost less too). Studies have shown that constructed treatment wetlands, when properly designed and operated, are most effective in causing a net reduction in CO2.
We all learned in grade school that plants take up CO2. What we (or at least I) didn’t learn is that using electricity means releasing a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Power plants around here, except nuclear and hydro, burn things to make electricity. And that burning releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Thus even electric cars, to the extent they plug in to the grid, cause CO2 releases. Right now, based on third party calculations and the assumption that Columbia Metro pays $0.05 per kilowatt hour for electricity, the sewer plant on the Congaree presently uses electricity enough to release 55 tons of CO2 per day into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of having more than 2,500 SUVs in the Columbia fleet. And there is probably little that can be done about that.
What can be affected is the amount of CO2 that will be released when tertiary treatment is required and installed. PG&E estimates that adding conventional tertiary treatment will cause a 40-50% rise in electricity usage at a sewer plant. Treatment wetlands, on the other hand, can use very little electricity. For example, the total annual budget for Orlando Wetlands, including the staff of five, is less than 30% of the current Columbia Metro electric bill. In fact, if you use the calculators provided by the EPA and a little math you see the difference in CO2 emissions between the proposed treatment wetlands and the conventional treatment is equal to about 22 tons of CO2 per day, or 1,000 SUVs.

A Link to the Journal of Environmental Quality

We posted a new link at right to an abstract in The Journal of Environmental Quality. They came to our attention writing about the successful enhancement of soil thought to be unsuitable for wetlands. Apparently the loamy soils at Cape Fear, NC presented some challenges to good nutrient uptake. These scientists were able to enrich the soil to make it possible to host good wetlands there. While the article is technical, it shows that, once again, even in the most hostile places, Mother Nature's water purifier finds a way to work.
And if you do go look at that page, click on the link on its right side "Similar Articles in This Journal" and you'll get hundreds of articles on wetlands and all the things they remove and all the climates where they have been tested. This stuff is for the scientists.

Why Does Nitorgen Need to be Removed from Wastewater?

Excess nitrogen in Lake Marion fuels the production of algae which, in turn, results in low levels of oxygen in the water. This creates an environment where fish and other aquatic animals cannot live. Additionally, high nitrogen levels cause other adverse conditions, including: blue baby syndrome, taste and odor problems in drinking water, increased risks of bladder cancer, and decreased water clarity. And Washington University researchers have found what they call a “warm gun” linking excess nitrogen and phosphorous to deformed frogs (too many or too few legs).
EPA has determined that the natural background level of nutrients in this region’s lakes is .02 mg total phosphorus per liter (TP/L) and .3 mg total nitrogen per liter (TN/L). SC DHEC has utilized these guidelines to place numeric nutrient criteria on Lake Marion which limits the levels of TP/L to .06mg and TN/L to 1.5mg.
Columbia Metro has most recently reported 24.6mg TN/L in its effluent discharged to the Congaree River. According to the EPA, this is approximately the same amount of nutrient pollution as barnyard runoff.

Don't Forget About Nitrogen

Lake Marion is an “impaired water” due to excess phosphorus and nitrogen. The inclusion of both nutrients as a source of lake pollution is significant because the Columbia Wetlands issue to date has been framed by comparing constructed wetlands to conventional treatment for the removal of phosphorus (only) from wastewater. This is not the whole picture. We provided a link in an earlier post showing that conventional removal of nitrogen and phosphorous is much more complicated and expensive than removing phosphorous alone.
Wetlands, on the other hand, treat both phosphorus and nitrogen more cost effectively than conventional treatment.
The EPA reports that over a twenty year period the cost (in present value terms) of constructed treatment wetlands is a mere 14% of the cost of conventional wastewater treatment. A WERF report also indicates conventional costs to remove nitrogen are 50% greater than the conventional costs to remove phosphorus.
It would be nice if the debate were only about phosphorous. But it’s not.

What Lives in Wetlands?

We are sometimes asked, “What lives in wetlands?” Usually this is followed by “Alligators?” The answer is yes; alligators are a small part of the diverse wildlife living in wetlands. To the extent that alligators live in Columbia, they will love the wetlands.
That doesn’t mean they are coming to your yard, though. Wild animals prefer not to share space with humans. It is when their habitat is reduced or conditions change that they find the need to explore new territory.
A special function of these wetlands is the habit they provide for wildlife. Constructed wetlands are undiminished and unaffected by drought for as long as they are needed to provide sewerage treatment. And as a primitive, moist refuge for wildlife, they will provide a home to lots of unique animals.
For instance, the Orlando wetlands are home to more than 200 species of animals.Birds especially love wetlands. Millions of blackbirds live in the Augusta wetlands and bird watchers are among the wetlands many tourists. The Orlando wetlands have over a dozen endangered species living in its wetlands park and, as I recall, they host the entire Florida population of several of these. As a result of the wildlife living in the wetlands, the Florida Audubon Society is a supporter and frequent visitor of the Orlando wetlands park.

A Similar Experience

The Charleston, S.C. Post & Courier recently published an article entitled, “Lakes [Marion & Moultrie] can absorb development, experts say”. However, the article warned that “problems loom for maintaining water quality and fisheries” and referenced the experience of lakes Norman, Wylie and Mountain Island on the Catawba River in North and South Carolina. These lakes, and the experience of the wastewater treatment plants discharging into them, serve as an excellent case study for the Columbia Metro WWTP and Lake Marion.The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities’ McAlpine Creek WWTP is located a mile north of the South Carolina border on the Catawba River. The McAlpine Creek WWTP is approximately the same size as Columbia Metro WWTP (it is permitted to treat 64 million gallons of wastewater per day). In 2002, when McAlpine Creek sought to renew its operating permits, SCDHEC challenged the permit because of phosphorus limits which already applied to South Carolina dischargers into the Catawba River. An agreement was reached which required McAlpine Creek to reduce its phosphorus levels by 70%. This required the plant to make $47 million in capital improvements and add $1 million in additional annual operating costs. More information on McAlpine Creek’s Phosphorus Reduction Project can be found in CMU’s year end report and on the Charlotte Chamber website.McAlpine Creek WWTP is an award winning plant. But when SCDHEC required stringent phosphorus limits, McAlpine Creek had no option but to implement the $47 million in capital improvements. SCDHEC has not yet implemented nutrient limits for Columbia Metro, but it is clear from Charlotte’s experience and that of Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority and Lake Greenwood that regulations will be forthcoming, and they may come when unexpected. Complying with nutrient limits is obviously expensive and ultimately the money comes from the customers. In Columbia Metro’s case, there are already great pressures on rates plus 2/3rd’s of Columbia Metro’s water and sewer system is more than 50 years old. A comprehensive plan involving reliable, inexpensive technology would almost certainly seem to include a treatment wetlands component.

Benefits of Constructed Wetlands

• The effluent that is currently discharged into the Congaree River would instead be sent to the Columbia Wetlands for tertiary treatment to remove additional nutrients and toxins, resulting in cleaner wastewater and no additional odors.
• The Columbia Wetlands will allow the Metro plant to meet stricter effluent limits which will be applied to the plant (1) when it expands or (2) when DHEC completes a total maximum daily load (TMDL) study of the Congaree River or (3) when DHEC completes a wasteload allocation for the relevant watersheds.
• The capital and operating costs of constructed wetlands are a fraction of traditional wastewater treatment costs.
• Constructed wetland cells have an expected life cycle 20 - 30 years which may be extended with proper maintenance and operation, and can be continually renewed by “de-mucking” the wetlands, or removing the dead plant biomass and replanting the wetlands.
• Constructed wetlands are environmentally friendly and often serve as nature parks and research facilities:
• 40,000 visitors per year to the Augusta, GA wetlands
• 12,000 visitors per year to the Orlando, FL wetlands
• Constructed wetlands are a time proven solution:
• The Orlando, FL wetlands were built in 1986
• The following cities are developing constructed wetlands:
• West Palm Beach, FL (1600 acres)
• Chicago, IL
• Phoenix, AZ (1500 AC)
• New Orleans, LA
• Independence, MO
• Here is a list of 15 constructed wetlands in Florida, including the world’s largest CTW (16,500 acres) in the Florida Everglades.

Water Environment Research Foundation

We want to call attention today to a new link we have posted in the right hand margin of our blog. The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) is a non-profit that is dedicated to researching water quality issues. The link is to a 2005 report on what they call "Nutrient Farming". These are basically constructed treatment wetlands and the report compares costs of conventional treatment with wetland removal costs. Among other things they find "savings of 51-63%" if you don't trade credits and up to 76-78% if you do. They considered very large and very small facilities, used EPA criteria, and based their numbers on an Illinois location. We thought we had posted this earlier.

Dr. Tufford's Op-Ed Piece

Interesting opinion piece by Dr. Tufford yesterday. Dr. Tufford has studied phosphorous in rivers and has an interest in the Congaree. Because we are getting no posts here, we enclose a link to his piece so we can have something to discuss. He mentions the EPA and its opinions several times in his article. We have posted links on this site which discuss the issue of early measurement and the misconceptions of wetlands. We know we will be dealing with those issues and have addressed them with operators and designers. Are there other issues we don't know about? This is precisely the kind of feedback we want.
Opinions are changing as this technology advances and we want the freshest input. Back in 1999 the EPA said wetlands often are inappropriate for large urban areas "owing to their large land requirements," but that is clearly not relevant here, as it is not in Orlando and Augusta. In fact, for some reason, probably the many regulatory and cost changes in the intervening eight years, many urban areas such as Chicago, Seattle, Pittsburgh and others are looking at these same wetland systems for their wastewater.
We have placed relevant EPA links on this site from its inception. If you know of others, from the EPA or not, please send us the links. We have also posted links to many cites that have successfully used this process in varied geographic and climatic conditions. We are not finding links that say wetlands do not work. Dr. Tufford, if you know something we don't know, that is what this site is for. We think this idea works, but do not want to waste time if it doesn't.
Dr. Tufford also rightly mentions university research and review. We definitely want that, but without a project it was hard to know what to ask for. We agree that it is time to seek that affiliation. Dr. Tufford, are you volunteering?

It's Great to be Green

The City of Columbia is going green (The State, January 20). Mayor Bob Coble will drive a City-owned hybrid car in order to “convey how serious [the City] is about protecting the environment.” The City has also joined the Cool Cities Campaign, a Sierra Club program which attempts to reduce global warming by turning Cities’ green commitments into action.
Our proposal is to be a part of that. First, please be clear, we want to do it in a way that saves money -- our goal is to prove that green and smart go together. If we really agree that there will soon be requirements to stop dumping fertilizer ingredients in the Congaree River, then we believe we are offering the least expensive way of doing that. We do not have to consider the general goodness of cleaning the water, the restored bird and animal habitats, the lowered urban temperature, the potential new parklands and walking trails, or the reduced greenhouse gases. If going green were the total goal, then these things alone might be enough to make the proposal worthwhile. After all, when you do those things you get a cleaner environment, more tourists and better recreation for your citizens, and those are legitimate government activities too. But all we are proposing here is a way to save the City and its taxpayers some "green" of their own, all the other "green" benefits just flow from that (no pun intended, I promise).

What This Means for Sewer Fees

In today's State, Gina Smith wrote an article about a spike in sewer fees ("City wants spike in sewer fees"). Apparently there is a proposed 500% increase in the "expansion fees" charged to homebuilders. This is based on a study by Black & Veatch that looks to fund more than $300 million in water and sewer improvements in the next five years. We don't know what the Black & Veatch study covers, but there is some potential good news: if their future budgets include the costs of removing the phosphorous and nitrogen from the Congaree, the Columbia Wetlands will save a lot of money. But that means there is some potential bad news: if the future costs do not include the phosphorous and nitrogen removal, then the cost estimate is not high enough and more rate increases will be needed. We don't want to be part of the problem, but we keep offering these wetlands not only to save the river and Lake Marion, but to save money for the homebuyers and homeowners as well.

Posting on Other Sites and Nitrogen Removal

This blog is starting to be discussed on other sites, and that is a good thing. Our purpose is to stimulate discussion – and education – on this subject. But please post here too (or maybe a link to your other post). If you post or discuss this idea somewhere else, it is only by luck that we might find that discussion. We don’t mind principled opposition here; we have stuff to learn too. But if discussion of these posts takes place only somewhere else, we fear some ideas might not have the beneift of full discussion.
For example, we have been told that there is some discussion about how removing phosphorous is much less expensive than we say. Removing phosphorous is relatively cheap, but that is a red herring, a sophisticated red herring but unfair to genuine learning. Phosphorous and nitrogen are problem nutrients. Removing one is easy, consistently removing both takes more brains, money and effort. See page 40 of Water Policy Working Paper 2005-011 at the Georgia Water Policy and Planning Center. And if you don’t remove both, the impact downstream will continue.

Treatment Wetlands to Keep Hormones Out of Ecosystem?

A new report from the USDA/ Agricultural Research Service indicates that treatment wetlands may be effective at removing hormones from wastewater. There has been increasing concern that agricultural hormones deposited in the ecosystem have found their way into the endocrine systems of fish and wildlife. This is a benefit of these wetlands that we had not considered, nor do we know if hormones are part of the effluent from the Columbia Metro Sewer Plant. But it is an interesting new benefit that is discussed here at Science Daily.

North Charleston Using Wetlands on Highway ROW to Restore Damaged Creek

Just last week the Post and Courier wrote an article about North Charleston building treatment wetlands to clean up the impaired waters of Filbin Creek. These wetlands are being built in a highway interchange. http://www.charleston.net/stories/default.aspx?newsID=124007&section=localnews

Benefits of Constructed Wetlands

Better Treatment - The effluent that is currently discharged into the Congaree River would instead be sent to the Columbia Wetlands for tertiary treatment to remove additional nutrients and toxins.
Cleaner Environment - Once cleaned by the natural processes, the resulting cleaner water would flow into the Congaree making it cleaner and with no additional odors. Lake Marion is currently already an "Impaired Water" due to phosphorous and nitrogen. No sources of the contaminants have yet been reported.
Meet Regulations at Lower Cost - The Columbia Wetlands will allow the Metro plant to meet stricter effluent limits which will almost certainly be applied to the plant when it expands or when DHEC completes a total maximum daily load study of the Congaree River. All over the country the communities that use constructed wetlands are experiencing a fraction of traditional wastewater treatment costs, both initial capital costs and ongoing operating costs.
Parks and Research - Constructed wetlands are environmentally friendly and often serve as nature parks and research facilities. Both Orlando and Augusta have nature parks and university and graduate level research at their facilities.

Orlando Treatment Wetlands

This is a typical view across the Orlando Wetlands Park.

What do Constructed Treatment Wetlands Look Like?

These wetlands make great neighbors. These photos show manmade wetlands in Augusta.