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.