Nutrient Removal in Small Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Design and Operation

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), nutrient pollution is one of America's most widespread, costly, and challenging environmental problems impacting water quality. Discharge of these nutrients in excess to our waters leads to a variety of problems including eutrophication, with impacts on drinking water, recreation, and aquatic life. Therefore, more stringent effluent nutrient limits have been imposed on most of the wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) and are coming to others. WWTFs have added or adding intensive treatment processes for extensive nutrient removal, but these upgrades are not affordable especially for smaller treatment facilities. WWTFs have significant economic and environmental benefits associated with their construction and operation; however, like other similar infrastructure, the economic and environmental impacts of their construction and operation need to be minimized to make affordable to the smaller facilities. Worldwide, it has been acknowledged that small-scale WWTFs can be resource intensive when compared with larger plants. WWTFs have reduced their nutrient discharges by optimizing operation and maintenance practices without incurring large capital expenses. This paper presents economical ways the existing small utilities can retrofit/upgrade, optimize, and/or operate their facilities to meet nutrient effluent limits.