Combining water based sanitation with regenerative agriculture/agroforestry/permaculture/soil improvement?Dear fellow colleaguesMany internation...
Published on by AquaVerde SCHWAGER, CEO at AquaVerde
Dear fellow colleagues
Many international universities teach only and very straight the
elimination of nutrients as “standard - state of the art” in order
to treat waste water with adjoined disposal of effluent.
For urban and semi urban areas, how about a much simple/slightly
different sewage treatment pond plant approach, compared to “state
of the art” in Europe/North America?
At least under the favourable climatic condition here in the tropics (Zanzibar, Tanzania),
instead of just dispose/eliminate nutrients, using instead a modular
ponds plant to make intensive use of most of the wastewater
nutrients, to actively produce organic material in a larger scale
with harvesting regular produced biomass material and
associated/adjoined composting/soil improvement for use on tropical
soils. This soils have usually a very low humus layer or just have
stony areas that no longer have any soil cover layer.
This could be just a "half" sewage treatment pond plant in the
main to reduce germs. I could imagine some kind of
wastewater-aquaculture with nano-aeration technics and OLOID's for
good steering/circulation on ponds and further use of the then still
nutrient-rich water for fast growing water plants and irrigating of
fast-growing trees with adjoined indirect groundwater recharge.
...
The biomass harvesting from the water surface and clearing of soil sludge should be done continuously with the help of a small suction dredger. The subsequent composting steps/earthing should be mechanised as far as possible, as in composting plants.
What is your professional opinion?
Any productive examples like this out there?
www.aqua-verde.de