Water treatment

Last Saturday was a beautiful sunny day, no wind and about 25° C. So, a day that draws you out to go fishing, so I did. But, (I don’t know how it is in your country) a day like this, is fantastic to be outdoors, but it’s usually the worst weather condition to fish for pike, so I blanked. And that doesn’t bother me at all, in fact this post has nothing to do with fishing either.

I went to the Belgian polders, enjoyed nature, and came across one of these places.

 

There are a lot of little villages over there, which produce wastewater of course, but instead of discharge all of that dirty water into the nice polder waters (which is certainly out of the question), or build a sewer network to take that water many miles further to a water treatment plant (which is very expensive), years ago they came up with a plan to purify the water in a natural way.

 

I’ll try to translate this in English as good as I can (and skip things that I’ve mentioned already).

“This reedland purifies the wastewater of the houses of Lampernisse (that’s the name of this little village). The dirty water gets pumped into a pre-sedimentation basin trough a discharge pipe. After that, it flows over into a flow wetland. Bacteria who live in the water, on the soil and on the reed shanks, purify the wastewater. Once the water is clean, it flows into one of the polder streams.”

 

Most people don’t even think what happens with their dirty water, it’s so normal that it just flows away to ‘somewhere’, but it does effect a lot of ecosystems (and our health) around the world. So when I see small (but effective) solutions like this, it brings a smile to my face while I realise… there’s still hope!