Page 20 RA I June 1979 EPA On-Site Technology Clearinghouse 580 Spruce St. Morgantown, WV 26505 Just established to offer technical information and advice, review systems, and report on latest developments in on-site technology. ECOS, Inc. 21 Imrie Road Boston, MA 02134 Developers of the Soltran solar compost toilet and distributors of a wide variety of toilet/greywater alternatives. SI("/""_,.,, FlU , ....,,,... .~ os " c!: --= c os ... •::! J\ ~ CITY GIRAY· e WAT E IR Rl-II.,sE ~ Intl4 l.4llll11l11.1i1 It1_WlllliIl .. . .iiIMllllil fl llU"IItUICITY WATER USE IU"'UIIIIJIIIIIUIIII4IIIMUllllltllmllllllltll'I'"1W11t Ci/y Wa'er us. can b~ cuI significanlly if city co,.mcils and waur boards ar~ willing 10 chang~ building cod~s and us. Ih~ir imagina/ions. In Ihis jd~al apartm~nt hous.. fr~sh wal~r is u.,d for balhin,. drinking, and clolhing washing. Th~ grqwal~r produad is ruycl~d from a slorag' lank in Ih, cdlar. II can b, uud 10 run vacuum 10j/~U dnd waler-coo/~d ai, condilion,,,. II can b, ,~-uStd for slrul washing. roof gard,ns. skyscraper fir, prol,clion. parks and rurtalion lalcts. and faclory coolin,. 1'0 achi,v~ cily waItT constrvalion. a n'w look al urban plumbing and piping is nudtd. II is 100 up,ns;., 10 rtplumb Ih~ Empirt S/att Bui/ding al Ihis latt dalt. Septic Tank Practices, Peter Warshall, $3.95 from: Anchor Press 245 Park Ave. New York, NY 10017 In its third and expanded edition, this is the finest basic source on household wastewater treatment-design/construetion/maintenance/troubleshooting/and politics. Give one to your local sanitary district. Sanitation Without Water, Winblad, Kilama and Torstensson, 1978, for price and availability, contact: Uno Winblad P.L.2205 S-68200 Filipstad SWEDEN Design, construction and operating details for a wide variety of improved waterless sanitation techniques in use around the world, along with a good, simple coverage of sanitation and disease. Thorough and well-done. A useful companion to the IRDC book above. Our copy was a preliminary edition, but it should be available by now in a commercial version. Low-Cost Technology Options for Sanitation, Rybczynski, Polprasert and McGarry, 1978, price unknown, from: International Development Research Centre Box 8500 Ottawa, Canada, KIG 3H9 An outstanding state-of-the-art review and annotated bibliography dealing with affordable sewage treatment options for rural areas and developing countries. Covers things such as truck collection systcms, that are ignored elsewhere. Filled with valuable information. Also of interest is their review of the process of information collection and evaluation used. As with any non-conventional or innovative technology, existing indexing, keywords and computer data bases were not of major value-20,696 listings boiled down to 188 useful references. In contrast, 8 consultants visiting 21 information centers came lip with 234 additional useful sources. Well done. Dear RAIN-folks: Lots of thoughts: Your article on composting had some very inaccurate information in it on heavy metals. and it is a dangerous situation. There are heavy metals in our environment everywhere-in the air, in the soil, in the water, and they come from many unlikely places. Consequently, they present a problem in composting in most every case, though as you could expect, some places it's not as bad as Others. Composting septage is probably safest. Your comment, "This problem [heavy metals from urban wastewater in sludge] can occur only in particular urban areas where industrial wastes that are not pretreated are discharged into the wastewater" is very far from being accurate, particularly where combined sanitary/storm sewers still exist. One of the largest sources of heavy metals in urban areas is from what is known as runoff- all the wastewater that runs off the streets after a rain or when people wash their sidewalks, cars, etc.-and it carries all the garbage that accumulates on city streets and parking lots. Think of the lead from car emissions, the asbestos from brake linings, etc. Mercury gets dumped down the sewers at dentists' offices, arsenic enters the waste stream from pesticides. and the list goes on. In the few places where the quality of rainwater has been measured, they have found that the chromium levels, plus many other heavy metals, far exceeds what any mathematical models of air pollution predicted, and that when this rain falls on drinking water reservoirs, the resultant water (after mixing) does not meet drinking water standards. So, even the drinking water sources may contribute metals, as well as the lead pipes, Galvanized pipes contribute Zn and Cd as wcll, not much better than the Pb. (PVC pipes have their own contributions, which mayor may not be inactivated by composting.) I look at this as a serious misrepresentation of the situation because of the potential health problems that can occur due to heavy metal poisoning. This does not mean that composting is not rpe best process we have for dealing with sludges, but it speaks 'co the need to be very cautious about the use of the final product. There are many places where the compost could be used with environmental and economic benefit, and just as many where its use is not appropriate. Regarding greywater reuse-I am currently pulling together material for NCAT to ~pdate what we all collectively know about it. (Recall that I wrote the greywater management chapter and the safety chapter in Goodbye to the Flush Toilet). In my research over the last few years about greywater, as well as my ycars of research in wastewater and drinking water quality, I have come to be very concerned about the longterm applicability of land disposal of wastewater, due to the lack of information about crops, biological dynamics in irrigated fields, nutrient uptake, application rates and sites, etc. Lots of questions. What this teUs me is that we have to be very careful about drawing conclusions about what systems
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