By far my favorite is "Sewer Mains and Laterals," with thick, colored-pencil stripes in brown, blue, and yellow showing the locations of different sizes of underground sewer pipes--starting from 6-inch diameters in neighborhoods like mine to the largest mains back then, 24 inches. What I love about the map is the outfalls--at Crabtree Creek north of town and Walnut Creek to the south (safely downstream from the pump that brings drinking water to the city), the colored-pencil stripes simply stop. That's where the sewage goes: into the river.
Those days seem almost absurdly quaint now, but they're not so bygone after all. In 1940, in some of the largest cities in the United States--Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City--every drop of whatever you flushed down the toilet was dumped untreated into a nearby harbor, river, or lake. New York City in 1940 treated approximately one quarter of its sewage, and it reached 100 percent only in 1986. Until then, had you visited your Aunt Louise on the Upper West Side, all your business would have flowed directly into the Hudson.
Historians estimate that before indoor plumbing became widespread, the average person used less than 5 gallons of water per day; nowadays a good round (and low) estimate of American at-home water consumption is 100 gallons per day, per person. Some of that gets sprinkled on lawns and a bit washes cars and pets, but overall we use that water either for cleaning ourselves and our dishes and clothes, in which cases it ends up going down the drain, or for drinking, in which cases it ends up going down the toilet. Every day each one of us turns 100 gallons or so of water into sewage. That's a lot of sewage, requiring a lot of treatment--and very little of it is poop.
At least now we do treat it. Though people have been piping sewage for thousands of years, actual sewage treatment is barely a century old. People had to figure out first that human waste was not just noisome but actually unhealthy and then how it was unhealthy before they could begin figuring out what to do with it. Once they did, they got busy in a hurry; you can all but drink most of the water that comes out of Western treatment plants, and most of the biosolids removed during the process are used to fertilize crops and treat soil. The system is not flawless--biosolids sometimes contaminate water; grease clogs cause sewage spills or system failures; heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products build up in biosolids--but overall it works splendidly.
Perhaps the first written sanitation instructions come from the Bible, which, written by and for a nomadic people, takes a small-is-beautiful approach: Deuteronomy urges you to dig a hole and "cover that which cometh from thee." By about 3000 BC, inhabitants of the Orkney Islands had invented toilets: Existing stone hut walls from that period have little niches with holes that drained to underground channels. The sewer historian Jon Schladweiler says that by a thousand years later, civilizations throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East were using pipes to transmit both stormwater and human wastewater away from homes and cities and, usually, into waterways. By about 1500 BC the Cretan palace of Knossos had an actual flush toilet--a seat, a pan, and a slave to pour water to sluice what disposable-diaper companies call "the insult" to a drain in the floor. Cretan techniques for channeling water and wastewater spread throughout Greece, and by the 5th century BC, Athenians were piping wastewater and stormwater to a reservoir outside of town and using it to irrigate crops.
The Romans improved on even that: After considering Rome's many accomplishments, Pliny the Elder called the sewers "the greatest accomplishment of all." (The word "sewer" comes from the Latin exaquare, "to carry away water.") The constant flow of water coming into the city from the aqueducts supplied public fountains and baths, and Romans figured out that public bathwater ought to be changed a couple of times a day. "They built public latrine buildings immediately adjacent to the baths," Schladweiler says, and flushed the latrines by routing the used bathwater under them. The majority of human waste, though, was simply thrown into the streets; aqueduct water was used to wash the streets and sweep that waste into the drains. Because Roman sewers lacked ventilation, the only egress for sewer gas was those same drains and latrines. On the plus side, Romans also invented portable toilets, setting urns by the side of the road near the entrances to the city (vendors would rent you what Schladweiler calls "a modesty cape"). Further, the 1st-century emperor Vespasian had workers collect the contents of urinals, which he then taxed and sold to fullers, tradesmen who cleaned and dyed the Romans' clothing--they had figured out that the ammonia in urine had cleaning powers.
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16 Comments
Add CommentExcellent article, kudos to SA for reprinting it. I've been studying water and wastewater treatment with an eye toward employment. The more I learn, the more impressed and fascinated I am by the ingenuity that had made WWTPs amazingly efficient and virtually smell-free, producing very clean water. It's unfortunate that most people can't or won't ever visit one of these high tech plants to see how much they aren't like you'd expect, and how sensible it is to re-use tertiary treated water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRecycled water is the only thing that makes sense in a space colony. Of course, you could reduce all the water in sewage to hydrogen and oxygen, then burn it, if you have enough energy. I'm always looking for alternative concepts. Got ideas?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcellent article, with information that should be, but is generally not, understood by citizens. Many still protest the fees they must pay for wastewater treatment as part of their utility bill. I hope this lengthy article can be condensed into newspaper features and municipal handouts to better educate citizens about a vital service. The city of Arcata, CA, has a very interesting wastewater treatment system that may warrant the attention of the author and readers. Link: http://www.cityofarcata.org/departments/environmental-services/water-wastewater/wildlife-sanctuary
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisone of the best articles i've read in along time....contained both historic and current detail...thanks Scott for your effort...this should be one of the main articles in sciam...not just a link to the side...then again 11 pages might be to much for most;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe four letter word for this stuff is actually an old acronym from the days of sail. When guano (bird droppings) was discovered in huge quantities on pacific islands and transported back in bales in the cargo holds of wooden sailing ships, any stored in the very bottom would get wet, give off methane gas which would be ignited by any sailor with a candle doing inspections. Several ships were lost before survivors told of huge explosions and fires that happened during inspections and the problem and mystery was resolved. Thereafter, maritime laws required all guano bales be marked "Store High In Transit".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuestion; Does it make sense to pump city water from wells (from the aquifer) use it, treat it, and dump it in the river-shed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA rural home pumps from a residential well, uses it, treats it and returns it to the ground. Not a river headed for the Gulf of Oil.
I agree wholeheartedly with several others here that this was a fascinating and well-written article. Who knew sewage treatment could be so interesting?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA well written story on the history of used water distribution and treatment around the world. Ending off with a a fine and entertaining write up on the process of water reclamation. I love the point which says that what the used water treatment plant is doing is in fact mimicking what the river is doing, just quicker!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA well written story on the history of used water distribution and treatment around the world. Ending off with a a fine and entertaining write up on the process of water reclamation. I love the point which says that what the used water treatment plant is doing is in fact mimicking what the river is doing, just quicker!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is hogwash, or perhaps a good example of the word it purports to define. See the Etymology section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit, which shows the origins going back to Roman times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis text was meant to reply to the comment on the origin of the s-word, not a comment on the article or reply to any of the other comments:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is hogwash, or perhaps a good example of the word it purports to define. See the Etymology section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit, which shows the origins going back to Roman times.
The article itself was wonderful, a fascinating read, with a mind-boggling amount of information I could hardly wrap my mind around (though Mr. Huler's style certainly was as clear as . . . triple-treated waste water!).
I live in flat Phoenix and I'm really wanting now to know how our system works. And all the other infrastructure we ignore but wouldn't want to be without these days.
Thanks for the kind words; mm, you beat me to the punch on the etymology. And in answer to Quinn, no, I don't think that makes sense; surface water -- like water from a reservoir -- basically just makes its way to the ocean through the city and its residents. That's where it was going anyhow, so wastewater generated by a community with surface water as its source can reasonably be released back into the stormwater system -- the riverbasin from which it emerged.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAquifer water is on the same journey, but it may take much longer, and continued pumping from an aquifer can deplete it; using septic systems to replace wastewater from such systems into the aquifer is probably a wiser move. Just the same, in my experience most houses on pumps -- using aquifer water -- are also using septic systems too, so the wastewater just trickles back into the ground.
There's a long chapter in "On the Grid" about stormwater -- much current stormwater treatment is about keeping it where it lands and helping it soak into the earth, instead of using curb and gutter to sluice it into creeks. It has a job to do as part of the hydrological cycle, and we do ourselves and the planet no favors by getting rid of it so quickly.
Many sewerage treatment stations only work at around 15% efficiency, because the operators cut the electricity supply to aerators and turbines to reduce expenses. The liquids that are then put into rivers are therefore a serious cause of pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPyrolysing sewerage is a new, simpler and cheaper technique that should totally replace traditional plant. See www.eprida.com for more details.
How sewage treatment works in this country is so complicated! Why all the bother?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey've got it figured out in Kibera; who needs sewers? Just poo in a bag and throw it in the street!
Thank you for this article; it has been a wonder to me that we honor or police and firefighters (rightfully so) but never give a second thought about those water and wastewater professionals who also keep us safe and healthy day in and day out. This too is a dangerious profession, there are more people who die in water/wastewater industry than in the police/fire profession. Again, kudos, keep up the good work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@cwclark: I did not know that -- do you have a source for that statistic? It's important and I will share it. Thanks for your kind words.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScott