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How a Wastewater Treatment Plant Works And how untreated raw sewage discharges from waste water treatment facilities can affect your drinking water |  | A wastewater treatment plants are designed to accept and treat waste water from homes, industries and other institutions. Different types of wastewater treatment facilities: municipal or publicly owned treatment works (POTW), industrial, and private, commercial & institutional (PCI) facilities.
POTWs are designed to collect and treat waste water from homes served by public sewer. An industrial waste water treatment plant treats process waste streams and/or storm runoffs within the facility’s boundary. PCI wastewater treatment plants can be government facilities, hospitals, restaurants, and prisons. Private wastewater treatment systems can be for homes not served by public sewers but utilize septic systems to treat wastewater from their homes.
Some wastewater treatment facilities are architecturally designed to blend with the neighborhood which they are located, so it not a surprise that many people may not aware of a sewage treatment plant in their neighborhoods. Some cities, towns, and villages have few waste water treatment plants while big cities like New York City have over a dozen of such facilities. Under the USEPA’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), wastewater treatment plants are issued permits to discharge their treated effluent to a nearby surface water (lakes, rivers, and streams), or groundwater. Each delegated state is required to issue a NPDES permit to individual wastewater treatment plant to discharge their treated effluent. Each state sets limits for how much flow a facility can receive; and how much pollutant concentrations each of this facilities can discharged to a specific segment of the water body. The limits are set so the water quality standards for that surface or ground are not exceeded.
Waste water treatment follows almost the same treatment profile as the drinking water treatment: screening, primary sedimentation or clarification, aeration, final clarification, disinfection. Some may include a final advanced treatment to remove nitrogen and ammonia.
Major contaminants in the wastewater treatment flow streams:
Contaminants from WWTP include Biochemical Oxygen Demands (BOD5), Suspended Solids, Fecal Coliform bacteria, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and more. |
How untreated wastewater can affect drinking water sources
Raw sewage from homes and other sources can carry bacteria, viruses, protozoa (parasitic organisms), helminthes (intestinal worms), and borroughs (inhaled molds and fungi).
 The diseases they may cause range in severity from mild gastroenteritis (causing stomach cramps and diarrhea) to life-threatening ailments such as cholera, dysentery, infections hepatitis, and severe gastroenteritis. People can be exposed through sewage in drinking water sources and other means.
Most treatment plants are very effective in treating and reducing these pollutants to levels consistent with the water quality standards. In some occasions, inadequately treated wastewater or raw sewage have entered receiving water or ground water within the vicinity of drinking water supplies. Such cases could be:
- When a treatment plant exceeds its capacity to accept waste water during a storm event, flows are throttled upstream of the treatment facilities that results in combined sewer overflows .
- During a mechanical failure at either the treatment plant or at a satellite facility associated with that treatment plant, raw sewage can be discharged to surface water
- Septic tank failures that leak untreated sewage into ground water
- Infiltration and inflow or I&I when groundwater enters broken and cracked pipes which eventually overwhelm the systems sending more water to the facility than it can handle
- Other cases may include undersized sewer systems, blocked pipes, power failures, and improper or illegal sewer connections.
If you suspect your drinking water is contaminated:Water Testing
The first step is to find out exactly the type of pollutants are in your. If the your water is contaminated beyond the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for a specific pollutant, you can a home test kit to find out how bad your water is. Home test kits are very reasonably priced and you can find some under $20 on Amazon .
| Choose a water filtration system
First identify the contaminants that make your water taste or smell bad, then decide on the best home filtration options to restore your water to the highest drinking quality. Home filtration systems come as a point-of-entry (POE), or point-of-use (POU) water filters. POE filters are installed at the water main to filter water coming to the whole house to treat water for the whole house. POU filters treat water from a single location such as kitchen tap or faucet, refrigerator, and shower head.
NSF certified filters are the best options. Certified water treatment systems have been tested to verify that they meet certain strict standards for health and aesthetics. This ultimately results in giving customers the assurance that the filter system they about to buy will do what the manufacturer’s literature says it will do. If you are looking for a way to treat your water effectively, it is best to choose a water filter or purifier system that have been rigorously tested by an independent group or organization. | Related Water Filters Guide: - How to Compare Water Filter Prices
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