Restoration - Progress Report on Watershed Project
Kelp Reforestation >>
Watershed Initiative >>
by Environmental Planning & Design
as reported by Bill Wilson, President Emeritus of AMRI
I am happy to report that we have successfully navigated the permitting process and commissioned the first onsite wastewater recycling system in the City of Los Angeles, at the new Highland Park Audubon Society Visitors Center. The Center is designed to be a LEED Platinum project, the highest rating available from the US Green Building Council, and features all types of energy, water, and materials mitigations that further a non-polluting, low-impact type of development.
In furthering our ultimate goal of recycling as much wastewater as possible, the Center, which is slated to handle 1500 visitors per day, was NOT hooked up to the sewer system. Instead, wastewater is recirculated over a set of ORENCO Advantex textile filters. We've used these filters before in Malibu for homes that are hanging right out over the ocean, but these are the biggest ones yet. They operate by recirculating settled wastewater from a large holding tank in periodic micro-doses over racks of polyester geotextile. Nitrifying bacteria and other micro-organisms colonizing the hanging sheets of material remove virtually all nutrients, pathogens, and oxygen-consuming wastes. The clear water that results is then run through UV light, and stored in a water tank that is kept fresh with an ozonating filter.
Following a testing regimen to establish that the water is recycled quality and free of pathogens, we plan to reuse it for toilet flushing at the Center, but in the meantime it is intermittently dosed to the landscape, via subsurface drip irrigation. And, the whole set-up is completely off of the 'grid' and powered by solar energy, as is the entire Center.
Getting this system through the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Building & Safety desk at the City of LA was a year-long endeavor. As the project went out to bid, no contractor would bother to bid on it, since it 'was impossible and a waste of time.' We broke through many barriers with this important project, and Kevin Poffenbarger especially spent many, many difficult hours of his own time working it through the system and making difficult engineering decisions, but as a result we have opened the door to a much more efficient and widely available use of truly decentralized recycled water, and diverting wastewater effluent from the centralized treatment plants and ocean outfalls.
As I try to point out at every opportunity, aquatic systems are poorly adapted for handling waste discharges, while soil systems are uniquely adept at decontaminating just about anything, especially when it's applied in small doses, such as with our subsurface drip systems, and in the presence of a good level of humic material and mulch.
Posted:11/7/03
