I grew up on my family farm near Roblin, MB. If you look in the bottom left hand corner you will see Roblin on the map. Follow Highway 83 North until you see the highway make a sharp left and my farm is very close to there. This is where the story of my sludge begins!While growing up, my brother Frank and I used to always play around the "pump out." It was basically a big tube sticking out of the ground close to the forest which was a short walk from our house. When we heard the water start to come out we would run to watch it. I had no idea where the water was from at that time...if I had known, I doubt I would have played near it!
There are no sewers that extend as far as our property. I called my Dad (again!) and he explained to me about how all this works. Basically we have a mini-treatment system in our basement. The water part gets filtered and is "pumped out" as grey water. Yes. Yes, I used to play in puddles of sewage water! So as I mentioned, there is a little pond that has formed where the grey water gets pumped out. It's close to a small forest, where there are lots of trees and vegetation growing as normal. It seems that it isn't harming the environment as far as I can tell.
The sludge from my family is held in a tank in our basement for a few months until it gets full. Then my Dad calls the Town of Roblin septic people, and they bring their big truck and pump it out. After that my Dad didn't know much else except that it went to the lagoon and go
t "the cell treatment." So I had to do some digging of my own! Online I found the license for the "Wastewater Treatment Lagoon," which is a little way south of Roblin and is used for treating wastewater and sewage from its citizens. I found out that it is an "engineered wetland." This is a designed, man-made lake with clay and soil on the bottom, vegatation that is planted and natural, emerging plants, wildlife and water. There are also poplar trees plants around to absorb moisture. It is supposed to simulate a natural wetland habitat which naturally treats wastes! There are 4 cells and the wastes are moved from one to another. By the time they reach the final cell the wastes are naturally purified and the effluent is spread on farmland for fertilizer. So this is where my biosolids ultimately end up... on farmland.I honestly do not find this surprising or disturbing. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. I was discussing the practice of spreading our "effluent" on the land where our food is grown with my lab partner for Environmental Chemistry class. She seemed genuinely disgusted! She got a horrified look on her face and said, "....I did NOT know that..." Haha! I thought it was funny. Maybe I have been desensitized from growing up on the farm. My Dad has always used decomposed cow poop as fertilizer too. He has several huge hills of poop in a field in various stages of decay. After several years the hill is just dirt, and he spreads it on the fields for fertilizer. We use it in the garden where we grow our own vegetables too. This is the completely natural lifecycle going on! It is not at all disgusting. But, if you live all your life with pavement beneath your feet and a night sky filled with streetlights instead of stars, there is no way to find out what a huge, complex, and wonderful circle of life you are a part of!
I'm glad that they are properly decomposed before being spread onto the land, and thrilled to hear that it's done in a way that lets nature do its job. The movie "Crapshoot" that we watched in class showed sludge being mixed in these huge metal tanks, but the lagoon treatment seems so much more natural. I am wondering if all the harmful substances are removed though. Heavy metals are a concern. Also I just finished a research paper on brominated flame retardants (for Enviro. Chem with my "disgusted" lab partner!) and I read that BFRs can be contained in the sludge then spread onto the land, allowing them to be distributed more widely in the environment. BFRs are very difficult to degrade because they are very stable compounds (many are aromatics). I am hoping that several years in the lagoon treatment cells would remove them, but much more research needs to be done on this topic. I have now discussed composting toilets with my boyfriend as a result of all this waste disposal inquiry. He is not very thrilled with the idea of storing "crap" in our basement! He would be 100% on board with the half flush-full flush toilets though. In any case, I have quite a few years left to convince him....if we even get a house at all. That is the problem with renting an apartment or condo...you have no say on any of the environmental features of the place. Right now they are installing new windows in all the suites at my apartment. They are not the high-efficiency ones, and nobody consulted ME about it... Even though we don't own the place we are still paying quite a bit of money to live here, so I feel like the tenants should be consulted on what renovations need to be done and how! My letter to the owners about starting a community garden on the grounds still hasn't come back yet. But I am determined to start a garden and composting program to complement it! When it goes through we will all be able to put our organic kitchen scraps to good use...we take nutrients out when we grow the food, it's only natural to put them back....and yes that includes poop no matter how strange some think it may be!
Works Cited:
Manitoba Government. (?) Town of Roblin Wastewater Treatment Lagoon License. March 18, 1998. Found at: http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/eal/archive/1998/licences/2313s1.html Retrieved on: April 6, 2010
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