Decentralized wastewater treatment systems for the Slaughterhouse of the City of San Fernando, La Union

P. C. Ortega*, V. M. Valdez*, L. C. Balanon*, F. G. Decena*, R. D. Medrano*, E. Estillore* & C. H. Jucutan*

*City of San Fernando, La Union, Philippines

Abstract: The planning, implementation and operation of the City of San Fernandos Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment Facility provides many lessons on the benefits and challenges of implementing Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems (DEWATS). Through the implementation of this system and others like it, San Fernando is achieving its vision of becoming a center of innovative wastewater technologies. The wastewater treatment facility at the slaughterhouse was conceived because of the insufficient treatment being conducted previously, consisting of a one-chambered septic tank and an open lagoon. The newly constructed DEWATS, developed in cooperation with BNS-BORDA and funded by the Congressional Development Fund (CDF) of Congressman Victor. F. Ortega, began operation in January 2011. It has significantly improved the quality of the effluent as well as eliminating odours, containing all wastewater underground, and creating an aesthetically pleasing area. The exemplary case of the San Fernando City Slaughterhouse illustrates the obligatory need but also benefits of investing in wastewater treatment infrastructure.
Keywords: environmental sanitation; slaughterhouse; decentralized wastewater treatment system

INTRODUCTION San Fernando, La Union is a city of 120,850 located on the South China Sea about 270 km north of Manila. It is a regional hub for travel, trade, and governance. It is also a city that is committed to sustainability. A number of environmental projects have been embarked upon in San Fernando, in areas of solid waste management, coastal resource management, forest resource management, and wastewater management. While all these projects are important for the health of San Fernandos citizens and its environment, sanitation emerges as a key issue which the city has committed to address through a variety of means. Against this political backdrop, the issue of San Fernandos slaughterhouse emerged. The slaughterhouse suffered from poor wastewater treatment, leading to bad odors and contaminated groundwater. In a collaborative effort, the City implemented a new wastewater treatment system - emphasizing efficiency and environmental sustainability through their planning. The completed system, while faced with several unresolved problems, can easily be considered a success for San Fernandos innovative wastewater treatment planning process. Further, its slaughterhouse wastewater

management serves as an informative example for other cities seeking to implement effective decentralized wastewater management systems.

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO: BACKGROUND The City of San Fernando's commitment to wastewater management began with the vision of former Mayor Mary Jane Ortega - in office from 1998-2007 - and has continued under the leadership of the current Mayor, Pablo C. Oretga. The city's increasing number of sanitation projects are beginning to draw attention to the city from other areas in the Philippines and around the world. San Fernando aims to be a center for diversified wastewater technology. By piloting a variety of wastewater treatment options, San Fernando will be able to learn which function best for itself, as well as providing a convenient location for study tours for other LGUs. In 2005, this vision produced its first pilot project, in the form of ecological sanitation (eco san) toilets, in one coastal and one mountainous barangay. Eco san is a waterless technology that relies on separating urine and faeces so that they can be processed separately. In 2006-2007, the Fisherman's village, a public housing project to relocate marginalized people living in vulnerable coastal areas, was outfitted with 86 eco-san toilet units. This initiative was spearheaded by a city partnership with the Center for Advanced Philippine Studies. San Fernando continued its innovative sanitation projects with a hybrid anaerobic and aerobic waste water treatment plant for the city public market in 2006, in partnership with USAID. The city is also currently in the process of installing Eco-Tanks, small scale sewerage treatment facilities that collect wastewater into a tank to be purified, in partnership with CityNet, USAID, and Rotary International. One tank is already installed and operational, and plans are well under way for installation in two more barangays. Finally, the construction of a Septage Treatment Facility has begun in 2011. This will allow the implementation of septic tank desludging for all households and commercial establishments in San Fernando. Among all these sanitation projects, the decentralized waste water treatment facility at the slaughterhouse stands out as project that took a poorly functioning waste water treatment facility and transformed it into a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing, and easier to maintain system. It uses a different technology than that of the market waste water treatment facility, requiring very little maintenance because the process is nonmechanized. The city believes that projects like these are important, especially in light of the current initiative to begin having residents pay a waste water management fee: by focusing on city-owned generators of highly contaminated waste water, the government demonstrates its own commitment and encourages the commitment of its residents.

THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE The slaughterhouse in San Fernando was built in 2000, after moving from its previous location near the city market (actually the current location of the market wastewater treatment facility). It is owned by the city government and is located in Barangay Tanqui. Around the property lies a creek to the East, an elementary school to the South, and rice fields to the North and West. A police station is also nearby. The slaughterhouse processes 80 hogs, 6 cattle, 2 carabao, and 10 goats daily. The meat from the slaughterhouse is transported to the city market, where it has the potential to reach any of the citys more than 120,000 residents. Meat production is highly sensitive to contamination by germs and bacteria. From the cleaning of animals both before and after the slaughtering process, the slaughterhouse produces between 12 to 13 cubic meters of wastewater per day. Wastewater discharged from a slaughterhouse has a complex composition and is harmful to the environment; it is much stronger than domestic or municipal wastewater. After an initial screening of coarse solids, slaughterhouse wastewater is mainly composed of diluted blood, fat, and suspended solids and may also contain some manure. It is generally reddish brown to dark brown in colour and can have an objectionable odour. If untreated wastewater is discharged to creeks, rivers and streams, the wastewater contributes significant levels of biological oxygen demand (BOD) and other nutrients which cause pollution to the body of water (BORDA, 2010). Because of these dangers, it was an obvious choice for the city to adopt a project to properly treat the wastewater from the slaughterhouse. Several goals were accomplished in the process: the demonstration of a new decentralized wastewater technology, the improvement of the appearance and smell at the facility, ameliorating the quality of the effluent being discharged to comply with current standards and regulations, increasing the safety of the meat produced, and generally creating a cleaner environment. Slaughterhouse: Pre-DEWATS Pre-renovation, the slaughterhouse wastewater treatment process consisted of a simple process of sedimentation, percolation, evaporation and aeration, through a septic tank, grease trap and open lagoon. Taken as a whole, the process lacked efficiency in properly treating the wastewater and mitigating odors. Some wastewater was allowed to seep into the ground, contaminating underground impoundments. The open lagoon allowed wastewater to decompose uncovered, creating odors which affected the surrounding community. The problems associated with open systems were further exposed as jeepneys and tricycles were washed beside the lagoon, allowing oil and grease to flow into the system, neither of which it was designed to handle. Further, the effluent was allowed to flow, incompletely treated and untested, into a nearby creek. The still-hazardous wastewater sat stagnantly during the dry season; sinking into the ground and again contaminating the groundwater. Complaints of foul smells, dirty surroundings, flies and untreated water are all symptomatic of a treatment process which failed to close biological circles, thus falling short of sustainability in the ecological or sociological sense of the word.

IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT Implementation process: How did DEWATS come to the slaughterhouse? After the construction of the waste water treatment facility at the market and the various partnerships with the Center of Advanced Philippine Studies (CAPS) and USAID, the City was inspired to take action on wastewater treatment at the slaughterhouse. City representatives from a number of departments visited several other wastewater treatment facilities in other cities in the Philippines, where the concept of DEWATS was demonstrated. On April 17, 2007, government officials from San Fernando, led by Mayor Mary Jane C. Ortega, attended a presentation by BNS-BORDA on DEWATS and how it could be applied in San Fernando. A site visit to the slaughterhouse was conducted after the presentation to determine if the technology proposed by BORDA would be appropriate for the site. Since then, a decision was made to undertake the project. However, construction was delayed due to the previously planned improvements to the slaughterhouse and the challenge of locating proper funding. In the end, the project was funded through the Congressional Development Fund (CDF) of Congressman Victor F. Ortega. The construction of the wastewater treatment facility took place from October to December 2010, and operation began in January 2011. Description of technologies and treatment process The completed wastewater treatment system at the slaughterhouse functions without mechanization or chemical inputs. The wastewater enters the biogas digester, where the digestion process produced methane gas. The accumulation of pressure from the gas pushes the wastewater into the settler, baffle reactor and anaerobic filter. Here, the wastewater is retained for a set period of time, to ensure proper water quality. The biogas digester allows the elements of the wastewater to decompose into their individual components, one of which is methane gas. The gas can subsequently be reused elsewhere in the slaughterhouse operation. The baffle reactor consists of a series of chambers which mixes the wastewater with sludge, thus aiding the process of bacterial digestion of the wastewater. The anaerobic filter circulates wastewater past micro-organisms which consume the hazardous BOD and ammonia contained within. The gravel filter exposes the wastewater to the biological community associated with the roots of the plants grown throughout it. Oxygen also reaches the wastewater through the plant roots, aiding in its treatment. Each individual element in the treatment process is designed to function in coordination

with the elements before and after it, thus increasing the efficiency of the whole. For example, the anaerobic filter removes all solid particles, so that the gravel filter into which the wastewater flows next does not become clogged, and is able to filter the water with little maintenance. The gravel filter also allows wastewater to travel just 5cm under the surface - a small design feature which eliminates odor entirely. The anaerobic filter and biogas digester are similarly low maintenance, due to the carefully coordinated flow of wastewater from one end of the system to the other; reaching each new element where it can be treated most efficiently. The wastewater treatment system, as previously constructed, was not adequate for the amount of wastewater flowing through it. An essential component of the new plan, therefore, was the scaling-up of the treatment facilities to match the quantity of wastewater being sent from the slaughterhouse. The biogas digester, anaerobic baffle reactor, anaerobic filter and planted gravel filter were all constructed at such a size as to be well suited to manage the 12-13 cubic meters of wastewater that the slaughterhouse produces daily. Having carefully measured the amount of wastewater before designing the treatment technologies, the city was able to construct them in such a way that the wastewater is treated on the most efficient scale, through the most efficient means possible.

OPERATION: DECENTRALIZATION SUCCESSES AND REMAINING ISSUES The underlying principles of the DEWATS system at the slaughterhouse are efficiency and sustainability. With capital costs now invested, the sustainability of the new facility is perhaps best exemplified in the fact that maintenance costs are now minimal. The chemical and biological efficiency of the system allows for very simple maintenance, as natural processes are allowed to occur in an unobtrusive manner. No odor is emitted from the underground systems, nor from the gravel pit. The common complaints of smells, dirty surroundings and flies are all alleviated by a design which does not expose the wastewater to open air until it flows into the creek after treatment. The passive system requires no electricity, and very little maintenance. Once a week, the manholes above the baffle reactor need to be opened and the reactor inspected to remove any scum or solid particles that may have accumulated. Large pieces of debris also need to be filtered and disposed of as the wastewater exits the slaughterhouse and enters the treatment gauntlet. By reducing the need for extensive maintenance, the City of San Fernando has also saved the money that would have been necessary to pay for more maintenance workers, in addition to the repair costs associated with active, electrically-powered systems.

Remaining issues Some issues remain in the sustainable treatment of the slaughterhouse wastewater. The primary concern is that effluent is still not up to DENR Class C standards, indicating problems somewhere along the way. However, as the City learns from continued operation and management of the DEWATS system, they are confident that solutions can be found for all these problems. Plants in the gravel pit have not been growing as quickly as expected (and, in some cases, are dying). The root systems of the plants were a key element in the filtration of the water, and the lack of substantial root development may be one of the reasons why the final effluent is not up to the required standards. Additionally, staff at the slaughterhouse have been thus far unable to procure replacement plants, so as to bring the wastewater into contact with oxygen, lessening the smell. The source of the plant failure remains undetermined, an unknown which slaughterhouse officials hope to rectify before bringing in new plants. There is some unused space between the gravel pit and the creek which could have been used to expand the gravel pit, potentially affecting the efficiency of the aerobic process. Frequent desludging of the slaughterhouse septic tank has also been necessary - once in the first three months. While wastewater is strained for large objects before entering the septic tanks, debris items such as horns and hoofs are finding their way into the tanks, causing premature buildups. A collaborative process was instrumental in bringing the slaughterhouse project to fruition, with many different stakeholders and government agencies providing input during the planning process. This management configuration, while successful during the planning stages, has recently led to some miscommunication in regards to maintenance responsibilities (generally no more than one hour per day). Currently, the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) is conducting quarterly monitoring of the effluent from the DEWATS. The results of the monitoring by CENRO have produced recommendations for troubleshooting and maintenance. The City Veterinarian Office has a claim to responsibility for maintenance and operation through their on-site presence in managing the slaughterhouse, and the technical expertise of the City Engineering Office makes it another potential candidate for leadership. Some of this confusion can perhaps be expected, as the DEWATS operation is still in its initial phase. Moving forward, the identification of clear roles for the various groups involved will be important for troubleshooting and maintenance activities.

LESSONS LEARNED FOR DECENTRALIZED WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT AND PLANNING The wastewater treatment facility at the slaughterhouse has been in operation for less than half a year. While implementation has not been without its hitches, without question the new facility constitutes a vast improvement over the old one. Major lessons include the importance of leadership, designing technologies to scale, and proper planning so as to minimize the need for maintenance. The successes of the new treatment system can largely be traced to a planning process which took sustainability and efficiency into account, thus diminishing the need for ongoing management as an important variable in continued high effluent quality. Although some issues remain, the overall efficiency of the system is such that no new staff had to be hired in order to run or maintain the treatment process. Existing staff have thus far been capable of performing the occasional routine tasks necessary to the continued efficiency of the system. Although long-term sustainability cannot yet be empirically proven, it seems likely that most of the problems presented are not structural in nature, and can be resolved through relatively minor changes to the system. Leadership has also been a key factor in every stage of the planning and implementation process. Without the vision of elected officials, San Fernando would never have begun its journey to be a center of diverse sanitation technologies. Committed public servants have been essential in overseeing the project from its inception; they have demonstrated continued determination to resolve the problems, both managerial and operational, that have come up during this process. Decentralized technologies have worked well for San Fernando for many reasons. By building a DEWATS specifically for the slaughterhouse, the system was able to address the unique aspects of the wastewater coming from that facility, where a more centralized system would not have been able to do so. There is also a much lower cost in creating smaller facilities to treat specific needs. The decentralization of wastewater treatment is what has allowed San Fernando to diversify its sanitation technologies and thus become an example for other cities.

CONCLUSION The City of San Fernandos commitment to effective, sustainable sanitation has borne fruit in the new slaughterhouse wastewater treatment facility. The approach is at once forward-thinking and simple; a product of strong long-term planning. Efficient wastewater treatment at the slaughterhouse site provides a decentralized solution to what is otherwise a complex problem of attempting to manage the health of 120,000 people. San Fernando has learned from its extensive study of projects throughout the

Philippines, and through the numerous innovative sanitation projects piloted within San Fernando itself. It is through these trials and observations that San Fernando has been able to parse that which fits its particular needs in the unique circumstances of the slaughterhouse, and to implement a solution tailored to the problem. San Fernandos slaughterhouse DEWATS stands as a legitimate success for appropriate and effective systems. References
BNS-BORDA (2009) Preliminary Concept of Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems for City Abattoir of San Fernando, La Union. Quezon City, Philippines. EMB-DENR (2005) DENR Administrative Order No. 2005-10 Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004 (Republic Act No. 9275).