Decentralised Wastewater Recycling Systems in Urban Villages
 Seminar on Research by the Environmental Technology Centre, Murdoch University

With industry partners
National Lifestyle Villages Pty Ltd
Peel Waters Pty Ltd
Moltoni Infratech Pty Ltd

This Online Symposium contains Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) renditions of the original seminar powerpoint presentations together with a PDF copy of Beth Strang's Technical Report #1 (2005): Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Systems (DeWaTARS) – a legislative framework and regulatory tool for their management in WA urban villages. A background to the seminar and research programme is included below. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer: this can be downloaded at no cost from www.adobe.com

Presentation Slides Downloads

• Introduction by Project Leader Dr Martin Anda, Program Chair, Environmental Engineering, Murdoch University

• Background by Industry Sponsor Richard Hammond, Director of Design, National Lifestyle Villages Pty Ltd

• DeWaTERS – A new regulatory framework for wastewater recycling in urban villages Beth Strang, ETC

• Technology Selection Database for wastewater recycling Shaun Jamieson, ETC

• LaDERS H2O – an urban village water effi ciency rating tool John Hunt, ETC

• Nutrient management from greywater recycling systems at urban village scale Jatinder Singh, ETC

• Sustainable urban landscape Joshua Byrne, ETC

• Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment Stewart Dallas, ETC

• Background by Industry Partner Ertan Barkman, Moltoni Infratech Pty Ltd

• O&M of urban village WWTP and community education New PhD – Beth Strang, ETC

• Water Balance Modelling in Urban Villages New PhD – John Hunt, ETC

Techincal Report Download

• Technical Report #1 (2005): Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Systems (DeWaTARS) – a legislative framework and regulatory tool for their management in WA urban villages.

Background to the Seminar

This seminar is the first of 3 to be conducted on a project entitled “Demonstration of Decentralised Wastewater Recycling in Urban Villages” that is funded by the Premier’s Water Foundation and industry partners including National Lifestyle Villages Pty Ltd and Peel Waters Pty Ltd.

The Premier’s Water Foundation was created in response to the State Water Strategy released in February 2003 by the Western Australian Government. The Foundation’s programs will support research and development projects that challenge boundaries and investigate innovative new ways of conserving water and maximising reuse of wastewater.

The project “Demonstration of Decentralised Wastewater Recycling in Urban Villages” will monitor and evaluate decentralised wastewater recycling and irrigation demonstration projects operating in Perth urban villages. The project will complete a wastewater recycling trial to demonstrate the performance and reliability to meet regulatory standards, effects on soil and vegetation, pathogen disinfection, nutrients prevented from infiltration to groundwater, maintenance issues of the systems and the effective amount of scheme and bore water saved in the long term. The research will occur in collaboration with National Lifestyle Villages Pty Ltd, Peel Waters Pty Ltd, Mallee Nominees Pty Ltd and other developers with support from Department of Health (DoH), Department of Environment (DoE), local government and Water Corporation. The project is focussed on the Perth metropolitan area and Peel Region over the period 2005-08.

The demonstration projects are as follows:

• Year 1: Bridgewater Lifestyle Village (National Lifestyle Villages Pty Ltd) with 389 onsite household greywater recycling systems for yard irrigation;

• Year 2: Timbers Edge (Peel Waters Pty Ltd) with common greywater collection from 260 houses to a constructed wetland treatment system for irrigation of POS;

• Year 3: to be confirmed but one of several peri-urban sites currently under consideration where all wastewater from several hundred houses in a village setting will be collected via a common effluent treatment plant for irrigation of POS.

Four (originally 3) research studies will be completed over the duration of the project:

• Honours project #1 (by Beth Strang 2005): Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Systems (DeWaTARS) in WA Urban Villages: Development of a Legislative Framework.

• Honours project #2 (by Shaun Jamieson 2006): Decentralised wastewater recycling: performance requirements for use in village scale urban environments under current planning, public health and environmental regulatory requirements for irrigation of POS in urban villages: development of a technology systems database for developers and regulators.

• (In addition Honours project #3 (by Jatinder Singh 2006): Nutrient Reduction Assessment for Household and Community Scale Greywater Re-use Systems. This project could be added to those originally proposed for PWF as additional scholarship funding was secured from industry partner Peel Waters Pty Ltd after the contract was signed.)

• PhD project (2006-2008 delayed due to lack of candidate): Water balance modelling for decentralised wastewater recycling on the Swan Coastal Plain: Results from a new Integrated Urban Water Management approach. There are three Technical Reports to be prepared during the project:

• Technical Report #1 (2005): Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Systems (DeWaTARS) – a legislative framework and regulatory tool for their management in WA urban villages.

• Technical Report #2 (2006): Decentralised wastewater recycling systems: a technology database for developers and regulators.

• Technical Report #3 (2006): Nutrient Reduction Assessment for Household and Community Scale Greywater Re-use Systems.

• Technical Report #4 (2007): Water balance modelling for decentralised wastewater recycling on the Swan Coastal Plain: Results from a new Integrated Urban Water Management approach. There will also be at least 2 papers published in scientific journals. The first paper so far is:

• Strang B, Anda M and Mathew K (2006), Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Systems (DeWaTARS) in WA Urban Villages: Development of a Legislative Framework, abstract accepted for the 7th IWA Specialised Conference on Small Water and Wastewater Systems, Merida, Mexico, March 14-16, 2006.

Good news for this PWF project was received in mid-2005 when land developer Peel Waters Pty Ltd decided to fund an additional Honours scholarship and Jatinder Singh was subsequently appointed to conduct the research project listed above. More good news was received in December 2005 when Murdoch University offered 5 PhD scholarships to ETC PhD candidates including Beth Strang and John Hunt who have both proposed research topics related to this PWF project.

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