Is The Cost Of A New Wastewater Treatment Process Worth It?

The “traditional” way of treating wastewater is to process all the wastewater at the same time. This means that all flows are mixed together and treated in aerobic or anaerobic systems. This results in designing a system for a much larger flow than is actually needed most of the time.

After the facility is built, ongoing costs include people to operate the facility, training for those people, the chemicals to treat the wastewater and energy to run the facility. In some cases, extra money is needed to manage the sludge or streams that can’t be treated. When you consider that wastewater isn't the core business for virtually all companies, it can be difficult to justify this expense.

While proper wastewater removal or treatment is necessary to avoid fines for noncompliance and negative publicity, among other issues, is using all of this money, time and human resources for something that is outside of your core business really worth it?