Facts About Waste Water Management

As people become more environmentally conscious, the importance of waste water management becomes a critical part of our "green" philosophy. Waste water management is the treating of household and industrial sewage to remove contaminants, both chemical and biological, and return the clean water back into the environment.

Significance

• Waste water management treatment cleans sewage and returns clean water into the environment.

Types

• Small communities use sewer lagoons to allow the treatment to occur naturally. The most common method for larger cities consists of a three-process system in which the primary treatment removes solids, the secondary system reduces biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and the third treatment reduces phosphates and nitrogen.

Prevention/Solution

• Untreated sewage can lead to the spread of diseases such as cholera. Effective waste water treatment returns clean water into the environment while removing the harmful by-products of untreated sewage.

History

• Even 4,000 years ago, the Greeks knew that boiling and filtering water through sand and gravel needed to be done for drinking water to be clean and safe.

Misconceptions

• Although the thought of drinking water that was once waste water, the final effluent coming out of a waste water treatment plant is usually cleaner than regular tap water.