As a region recovers from one of the most devastating environmental catastrophes in recent memory, its residents are fighting against the disposal plans for the resulting wastewater. “It’s been a…
The city of Phoenix is working to reopen a reclamation plant that was shut down in 2009 thanks to the economic recession, with a recently approved $30 million budget to fix the facility, add reclamation technology, and prepare it to treat as much as eight million gallons of wastewater per day in a practice known as direct potable reuse (DPR).
When phosphorus enters source water, typically as a result of agricultural runoff, it can exacerbate the presence of toxic algae, which poses dangers to wildlife and drinking water. These harmful algal blooms are becoming a growing problem, so the ability to remove phosphorus from wastewater and use it to improve soil health offers a much-needed solution.
“If you give somebody a glass of water and tell them that it’s been purified from wastewater, more than likely one person out of two will not drink it,” Guillaume Clairet, the chief operating officer of a water technology company, told BNN Bloomberg. “But if you convert that same water to beer, then all of a sudden nine out of 10 will.”
“If you haven’t heard of the great Atlantic sargassum belt, or even if you have, chances are high that you’ll see it pop into your news feed at least once this summer,” reported NPR. “After a decade of record-breaking blooms, 2023’s sargassum mass is again shaping up to cause headaches (literally and figuratively) for beachside towns and tourists.”
A wastewater treatment plant discovers a new and effective way to combat its Daphnia problem.
Leading researchers may have made a significant breakthrough in the ongoing battle against one of the country’s most notorious — and notoriously difficult to treat — drinking water and wastewater contaminants.
While the use of exhaust “scrubbers” on seabound vessels may be benefiting air quality, it now seems that this trend is coming at the expense of the world’s source water. “The toxins do not just disappear,” The Guardian reported. “Aside from being acidic, scrubbers contain heavy metals that accumulate in marine food chains… What most concerns experts, though, are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These have been linked to several types of cancers and reproductive dysfunction in marine animals.”
Among the numerous threats to drinking water and wastewater quality presented by ongoing climate change, the increasing likelihood of oil spills at sea is one of the most challenging. As ABC News reported recently, with sea levels rising and stronger storms striking, these water-contamination events could become more likely than ever.
Covid-19 Colleges Look To Wastewater To Get A Jump On Coronavirus Since the coronavirus started sweeping through the U.S., multiple research efforts have gotten underway to figure out how wastewater…
