Residential Wetland Wastewater Treatment

[bicyclemichaela]

Dear Colleagues:
I want to treat about 6,500 gallons of residential wastewater that will be produced in a three day period. I need some suggestions for articles on how they do it over in Europe, which I heard they do, how to get a dry climate California County to accept such an unusual idea and how to be allowed to put the effluent on fruit trees in an orchard near the house. The ground is not permeable enough to accept that much water, but the flows will only be that high every once in a while when there are guests for a few days. The rest of the time it will be much lower.
Thanks.
Bicyclemichaela

 

[bimr]

First, you need to develop a wastewater treatment scheme that will treat water to the standards required for irrigation. There are many possible treatment approaches, but generally you are looking at a biological treatment process with effluent filtration and disinfections. The standards that you have to meet are spelled out in the Title 22 regulations:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/certlic/drinkingwater/Documents/Recharge/Purplebookupdate6-01.PDF

(See page 50)

For the flow that you are estimating, this project will not be economical proposition. You also have to be concerned about the operating costs since you may be required to have a wastewater treatment plant operator to run it.

It is probably not worthwhile to import a system from Europe since everything that you will need is available in the States. In addition, if you try to import some technology and attempt to have it approved by the regulatory agencies, you may end up in a time wasting regulatory dilemma

 

[civilperson]

A regular septic system with a 6500 gallon tank and associated laterals will work. Contact the local state agency for the rules and examples. A permeability test is required to size the laterals and 200% of calculated leach field area must be provided for use if the original field becomes unworkable.