What happens to everyone's $hit after being processed at the water treatment plant?!?

Question

Seriously - I'm curious - does it get turned into fertilizer or what?

Answer 1

I visited a wastewater treatment plant when I was in high school 20 years ago. They turned it into fertilizer and grew tomatoes on it. The guide who was showing us the place picked one and ate it.

Answer 2

Here in Arizona, one thing we dont have a lot of is water, and we sure dont have any OCEAN to pump it out to. So we re-process it.

Wastewater treatment is a HUGE business in the SW United States, wastewater is considered toilet and shower water, dishwater, etc., any water that goes into the city sewer system.

Its pumped to the facility where it's treated in several stages. The first stages remove the solids, which are typically burned or sold to a small few as fertilizers. Then enzymes are added to the water to remove suspended solids, too small to be skimmed off. Benign bacterium are sometimes added to further eat away impurities. The water is chlorinated, aerated and sometimes de-calcified. Then, to return this nasty stuff into drinkable water again, it's pushed through huge tanks of sand.

I used to be (after the Army) a Lakes Technician for the Ocotillo Community Association in Chandler, AZ. Part of the community common area was a 93 surface-acre man-made lake, which was supplied by the Treatment Plant, to the tune of 8 million gallons a day. The lake water is then used to irrigate the Ocotillo Golf Course, all Association common areas, and not a few of the residents' front yards. Severla businesses in the area buy this water for their landcaping or industrial uses, some use it on nearby agricultural fields, etc.

Since the Ocotillo lake sits directly over the main underground water aquifer for the metropolitan Phoenix area, we had monitoring wells set up around the lake. We would gather water smaples from these wells once a quarter and take the samples to the treatment plant for testing to see if we were contaminating the area's groundwater. While the water we received into the lake was not 'drinking-water' quality, it was plenty good enough for the scores of Bass, Bluegill, Grass Carp and Tilapia the residents pulled out of that lake every day. Not to mention the Herons, sandpipers and other waterfowl which have made my lake their home. We even had a brown pelican take up residence with us for about 4 months!

Answer 3

It goes through a grinder called a communitor, which is like a garbage disposal. It then gets grinded down into a liquified mulch which is chemically treated. It flows as a slurry into a grit chamber where inorganic materials (sand, gravel, silt) settle-- that stuff is then disposed in a landfill. The rest then goes into a sedimentation tank which allows organic materials to settle at the bottom and get removed. Other stuff happens too to continue to clean it up, but basically the organic material really does get thickened, and broken down and turned into fertilizer. The other liquid gets a secondary treatment, which is yet another process.

Answer 4

There are many methods for dealing with human waste. The generally accepted method in North America consists of three stages. Check 'em out.

Sewage Treatment - Primary Treatment
This stage begins when your house's pipes connect up with the sewer. When the waste arrives at the treatment plant it goes through "foreign-object protection." The big pieces of waste get filtered out in this stage. The waste goes through a series of filters to get rid of pieces as varied in size from a few feet wide (eeeew, how did that get in there?!) to pieces the size of sand. This stuff all goes to the landfill. Now sewage is separated into sludge and liquid waste.

Sewage Treatment - Secondary Treatment
Secondary treatment removes bacteria and nasty smells from the sludge and water. It usually uses bacteria to consume the available nutrients and organic compounds. Inorganic salts, carbon dioxide and water are left behind. The basic treatment for the sludge is digestion. That's right: it gets eaten! The sludge is pumped into concrete disgesters where bacteria eat the sludge and produce methane. The sludge is drained of any remaining water. The dry sludge can then be sold to farmers who use it to enhance their soil.

Sewage Treatment - Tertiary Treatment
Tertiary treatment, which means the third level of treatment, removes all the rest of the junk from the remaining water, to restore it to a more natural state. Nitrates and phosphates are usually the most dangerous chemicals left in the water. Algae and rotifers (aquatic organisms) are used to absorb these chemicals. The water is sterilized and then released back into oceans or streams.

Answer 5

It is processed with chemicals and treated in large sewage tanks until ready to be released back into the water mostly rivers. In Atlanta, Georgia there was a pipe that broke sending tons of sewage into the Chattahoochee River. The company fixed the pipe paid the fine, but the damage is done. I wouldn;t eat anything out the river, your subject to turn into a slime ball and I think we have some walking around Georgia already.

Answer 6

All 5 tremendous lakes percentage a topic-loose border with u . s . a . distinct than for Lake Michigan it extremely is fairly contained contained in the U. S.. If the U. S. needs to take water from the lakes, that they had benefit this from their fringe of the lake. That being suggested, the St. Laurence seaway water degrees are depending on the rainfall that takes position upriver that at very last finally ends up contained contained in the lakes themselves. If some marketplace unexpectedly began pumping 1000's of gallons of water out of the lakes on a commonplace foundation, commercial and private boat website travelers in and out of the lakes ought to in all likelihood be affected, hurting all distinct industries. both the governments of u . s . a . and Canada ought to need to make effective that they each and each and every do no longer unilaterally do something that ought to reason their neighbours or possibly their very very personal agencies harm. and of course, there is many times mom Nature to imagine of about. you adjust an ecosystem by employing potential of lowering the water degrees and also you'd be able to kill off a species or adjust a territory of a predator. reason & result: A farmer damns a move or river so he can grant water for his cows and sheep. This prevents a grizzly submit to from getting his on a commonplace foundation quota of fish from that river. The grizzly begins getting hungry so it turns its interest to the farmer's farm animals, or the farmer's 2 youthful children that play contained contained in the woods interior sight. i'm no longer keeping that grizzly bears are going to come back decrease back off and commence eating human beings simply by very truth Canada began promoting water from the tremendous lakes. yet i'm keeping that each and each and every action ought to have a reaction, and consequences.

Answer 7

The water is cleaned and the waste is dumped in the nearest running water. That is why things are getting so polluted. Then there are those rock bands who dump the waste directly on people riding on boats under bridges in Chicago.

Answer 8

I heard that the solid leftovers are used by commercial ag businesses as fertilizer. Liquid by product is released into the environment. I'm not positive though.

Answer 9

when it gets to the treatment plant it goes in to tanks...in the tanks it has these arm like things that go round in circles and sifts all the **** in to the net like things on the arms...all the liquid waste is recycled and reused!!! belive it or not i know it sounds gross.. and the waste is pumped out into the ocean! TRUE FACTS!

Answer 10

goes back into out water system! (after going through cleaning plants)