We'll Take It All: Sewerage, Septage, FOG, And Street Sweepings

It is relatively common to hear the phrase “resource recovery” in place of what was formerly identified as a “wastewater” treatment plant. Centralized wastewater treatment is essential to create safe and sanitary conditions for cities and towns. These treatment facilities have allowed for the expansion of infrastructure to accommodate growth and development.

As the concentration of people and businesses increase, so to the resource and infrastructure with the challenges to keep up. While droughts are nothing new, large population centers are acutely susceptible to lessening water supplies. This created an impetus to investigate new water sources. Over the last several decades, advanced technologies introduced for treatment in the WWTP allowed for the possibility to extract reusable water from the waste stream.

Beyond water scarcity, increased challenges regarding the cost of energy and limited available space, continue to drive innovation within the water treatment industry. On closer examination, not only is water a valuable resource, it turns out that a plethora of resources can be extracted. This converted wastewater as a liability to an asset. Disposal of solids in landfill constituted a high cost and occupied dwindling landfill space. To begin with, the use of dewatering and drying technologies to process the waste sludge created a viable biosolid for agriculture land application.