P2

I don't know why, but there seems to be a movement toward abbreviation.  Last week was P2 Week, better known as pollution prevention week.  Throughout the world, water is something all life requires.  To determine if life may have been on Mars, astronomers look for water.  Water on Mars does not help us here on earth.  Like the land, all the water we have is all the water there will ever be on earth.  Prevention of pollution is critical to preserve water.  In southern Wisconsin, heavy rains this summer have flooded varied locations and the flood waters washed more contaminants than normal into lakes, streams, and wetlands.  What happens to water is crucial to the survival of plants, animals and humans, but yet water is often treated as an expendable resource.  We need water for drinking, washing, and cleaning.

Waste from outside the district being dumped for treatment at the NSTP
operated by Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District
Most waste that comes in by truck is from the pumping of septic tanks.

To help improve water quality, for about 30 years storm water regulations have required detention basins.  Detention basins are mainly a volume control measure to limit downstream flooding.  For about 20 years, there came a requirement for wet ponds, or retention ponds, which hold and keep water on the idea to allow sediments, and their pollutant loaded particles to settle in the ponds. Retention ponds may also function as detention ponds, so major storms may overflow the pond.  In Dane County, most communities require water to be detained to that equal to a 100 year storm event.  A 100 year storm has a 1% chance of occurring every year and in our climate is equal to 6" of rain over 24 hours, or 3" of rain in an hour.  When over-topped the large flush is loaded with pollutants.  More recently, there is a requirement for recharge, or infiltration, which leads to bio-basins, or rain gardens.  These assist in maintaining the aquifer, and to help with pollutants, and flood control. These structures also have an overflow.

Pipe and secondary treatment tank

 If you are in a rural location the used water, better known as sewage, is placed in a septic system and, usually, reenters the earth and the water table.  The idea is that the water is filtered by natural processes.  If you are urban, the water is treated at a sewage treatment plant, and reintroduced into the environment after treatment into streams or other water bodies.  As part of pollution prevention week, last Friday my wife and I took a tour of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) Nine Springs Treatment Plant (NSTP) .  I have toured the plant a number of times, but each time I seem to learn something new.  It was the first tour for my wife.  The plant is a paradox, the treatment method is at once both simple and complex.  Simple in that there is three main parts, and that natural aerobic and anaerobic organisms, known as bugs, do much of the work.  More and more regulations are being placed on point sources of pollution as they are politically easier to attack.  But, yet the so called low-hanging fruit methods for removal of some pollutants, that is those that are cost effective, have been used, and reduction in permit limits to remove even more come at a much higher cost to remove much less.

Phosphorus is a good example. The NSTP can remove phosphorus well below its current permit limit of 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L), with it normally removing down to about .33 mg/L, as was the case for August 2018.  However, an anticipated new phosphorus limit of .075 mg/L will be much more difficult to obtain, and potentially much more costly.  It has long been recognized that much of the phosphorus in our lakes and streams, and phosphorous is a main component that helps lead to algae growth (think blue-green algae) is from aspects well beyond the control of MMSD--agricultural fields, construction sites and urban runoff.  Leaves contain a high amount of phosphorus and when allowed to collect in the gutter and storm sewers with rainfall they produce a phosphorus laden tea.

One of the final clarifiers being cleaned and painted

Realizing that phosphorus is not simply a treatment plant issue and involves activities in the whole watershed outside of MMSD control, and in anticipation of the new phosphorus limit,  MMSD took the lead on an innovative management solution referred to as Adaptive Management.  Involving varied parties from MMSD, to local municipalities, to farmers the project aims to help reduce phosphorus from non-point pollution sources in addition to that able to be accomplished at the treatment plant. A pilot project a few years ago in the northern part of the watershed has now expanded.  You can watch a video on Adaptive Management here.  Farmers receive assistance with manure handling (use of digesters), aerial seeding of annual rye to help hold soil in place, and the hope is that buffer strips will become more common in the rural area.  Urban areas have had buffer strips, known as environmental corridors, for over 35 years for lakes, streams, creeks, and wetlands.  These corridors can be more than 75 feet. However, rural runoff, particularly agricultural runoff, also contains pollutants, hence the need for vegetated buffer strips in rural areas.

Belt thickener.  Do you know what the black stuff is?

Common to both rural and urban areas is construction activity.  Since phosphorus is bound to the soil, it makes its way to the streams, lakes and wetlands, through sediment.  Lack of construction site erosion control can be damaging to the lakes, streams and wetlands.  A number of complaints, with photos, that I passed off to the Village of McFarland, came back that the building inspector is on it, but little or no change in practice has occurred.  Erosion control, as much as the building inspector and other McFarland officials may think, is more than silt fence.  There is tracking, pumping, and improper silt fence and pond maintenance.

Silt laden rain storm water entering an overflow structure of a storm pond,
at McFarland Elementary School
The black is not my finger.  Due to the hard rain the camera lens cover failed to fully open

After one of my complaints about the school projects in McFarland, the Public Works Director emailed back that most of the sediment goes to basins or wetlands.  An incredulous lack of knowledge on which I challenged him on two accounts.  First, he assumes the basin works, and second, phosphorous affects wetlands too, and I offered to have Cal DeWitt, professor emeritus at the UW, speak to him on the pollutant issues facing wetlands.  What it unfortunately comes down to is that people need to care, and that is not present with contractors, and some enforcement officials.

Sediment laden water, mainly from the above, a few hundred feet downstream 

Perhaps they think their little bit will not affect the lake, stream or wetland.  We all need water, and the algae in the lakes is counterproductive to o the public, health and safety.  And it certainly does not help recreational users of the lakes.  We can all do our part.  Conserve water.  Here at home in the growing season we save the water used in the kitchen until we get warm water to wash the dishes for watering plants.  We save the water used to rinse our greens for watering outside flowers.  We had low-flow toilets installed over three years ago.  I use a mulching mower and keep cut grass out of the street.  I complained a number of times, unfortunately to no discernible affect, to the village about poor erosion control methods at the school construction projects.  We all can play apart in reducing pollutants.  As noted by an MMSD staff member, it is much more cost effective to not have the pollution than to try and remove the pollution later.

Pumping of silt laden water from a proposed rain garden

MMSD is doing its part.   It produces a good amount of its energy from methane, which gas is byproduct of its incoming untreated effluent.  It uses treated effluent to flush the toilets in its new maintenance facility.  The administrative component of that facility is heated and cooled by heat pumps transferring energy from the treated effluent.  The vehicle storage area is heated by a radiant system that uses the energy output from the generators (which use the methane to produce electricity)  to heat the floor.  Energy put to wise use.  Its Adaptive Management project is gaining national attention.  It harvest phosphorous out of the waste stream for use in fertilizer.  The phosphorus in the fertilizer, Crystal Green, is manufactured to only release phosphorous to the plant roots.

Pumped water entering storm sewer

MMSD realizes the importance of one water.  My niece who lives in New Orleans, has drinking water that comes from the Gulf of Mexico.  Most of MMSD's treated effluent goes to Badfish Creek, which goes to the Rock River, which goes to the Mississippi River, which empties in the Gulf of Mexico.  Think about it.  My niece may be drinking water that originated here in part of Dane County, perhaps even McFarland, but more likely from Madison.  In that sense, clean water becomes personal.  In many cases the solution to pollution is dilution, an odd way to obtain cleanliness, but measurements are often in parts per something;  think phosphorus in milligrams per liter.

Treated effluent from MMSD

To get an idea of the one water concept, before our tour both my wife and I had a taste of root beer produced with treated effluent.  Yes, it was made with treated effluent.  Before you gag, the water used to make the root beer was treated with three additional processes before making the root beer.  Last year they produced beer, which they called Nine Springs Pale Ale.  The processing of the water used was so good that they had to add back in some naturally occurring elements into the water, such as salt.

Overview of part of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District  NSTP

The treatment plant process is, as noted, both simple and at the same time complex.  The process gets more complex near the end when removal of phosphorus, as one example, takes over.  Part of it being the sludge thickeners and the removal of struvite (phosphorous and ammonia and other elements) in to small pellets sold to make Crystal Green fertilizer.   Prior to this process, struvite would clog district pipes, and it was hard and difficult to remove.  My wife liked the tour and came up with some outreach suggestions.  How many people know that there is no such thing as a flushable wipe?  Or the siloxanes that are part of personal care products are found in our water.  Drugs need to be properly disposed and not dumped into the waste water stream.  Our human activity is increasing the complexity, and cost of treatment.  We need to all do our part, and on behalf of the district, and the maintenance staff, other than toilet paper, there is no such thing as a flushable wipe.  We need to preserve and take care of our water.  All the water we have is all the water we have had and will have.  To learn more, take a tour of MMSD.  You may be surprised as to what is involved.

Outfall of pumped silt which entered storm sewer

One Pollution Prevention Week Nine Springs Wastewater Treatment Plant tour participant