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INTRODUCTION
Yarra Valley Water presently has 18,500 ‘backlog’ properties that do not have appropriate
sewerage services. It is estimated that to sewer these will cost in the order of $250m. With
such a large capital investment Yarra Valley Water wants to ensure that they deliver the
most environmentally sustainable solution.
Innovative solutions such as greywater reuse and urine separation could play a role in
achieving sustainable and reliable water and sewage servicing of backlog areas. Financial
cost and community attitudes certainly still need to be addressed, but this study has
demonstrated that from a technical perspective, sustainable water servicing is achievable.
‘Backlog’ refers to properties with ineffective septic systems. Generally, this is because the
lot is too small to contain discharge, and density of local development is high, hence
causing either health and/or environmental risks. To overcome this, backlog properties
have been scheduled to change to a reticulated sewerage system. ‘Backlog’ usually refers
to properties that do not have sewer connection to a reticulated system, however in this
case there is also no connection to a reticulated water supply.
To determine the best way of servicing backlog areas, Yarra Valley Water commissioned a
Life Cycle Assessment of servicing options for a small peri-urban community on
Melbourne’s fringe. The study included water supply, wastewater and stormwater servicing
and focused on an area comprising 54 hectares with 66 dwellings and a population of 189
people. Greywater reuse, rainwater tanks, urine separation and a range of wastewater
treatment measures were considered. It was not practical to connect the region to existing
centralised systems due to difficult terrain and distance. This paper represents the findings
of the water and contaminant balance component of the study. A complementary paper
(Tjandraatmadja 2007) details the wastewater treatment options. Outcomes of the Life
Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing will be published soon.
METHOD
In consultation with the project partners, a range of servicing options were selected (Table
1). Options involved urine separation and storage, greywater diversion without treatment,
greywater treatment and storage, use of existing septic tanks and centralised wastewater
treatment. (Note that rainwater tanks and septic tanks are existing).
Centralised treatment in Table 1 refers to locally treating the sewage from all of the
properties in the study area (rather than connection to an existing sewage collection and
treatment system). The methods of collection and treatment are not detailed in this paper
(see Tjandraatmadja 2007 for details). On site treatment of sewage as a stand-alone
measure was not analysed as the land was not capable of absorbing and containing
discharges on site all year round (Whiteheads Consulting 2006).
Rainwater tanks were used for all options due to centralised water supply not being an
option. Although no data were available, it was observed that rainwater tank sizes varied
from lot to lot, with a median size of around 25 kL. Modelling individual rainwater tank
sizes for each lot was beyond the resources of the project, so the median size was
adopted for modelling.
Urine separation was investigated because it can improve the efficiency of wastewater
treatment plants (Wilsenach and Van Loosdrecht 2004) and be used as a well-balanced
complete fertiliser, thus closing the nutrient loop (Jonsson 2002). Urine separation and
storage requires a specially designed toilet for separate collection of urine and faeces. In
this study, the urine stream was collected and stored in tanks at each individual house. It
was then collected by truck every 6 months and used for nearby agriculture.
Swales and conventional curb and channel were considered for stormwater design. Other
Water Sensitive Urban Design measures such as wetlands and bio-retention trenches
were not considered because of constraints of topography (i.e. the area was too hilly) and
the high-quality stormwater due to the low imperviousness of the study area.
Cluster scale reuse of stormwater and wastewater were not modelled because of the
constraints of topography and associated cost. A suitable flat location for storage was not
obvious and the costs of pumping and treatment (for such a small number of properties)
meant that cluster storages were not feasible.
Servicing options were assessed by using the water and contaminant balance model UVQ
(Mitchell and Diaper 2005) and the stormwater treatment train model MUSIC (Wong et al.
2005). MUSIC was used for modelling stormwater because it can be operated at a six
minute time-step which is important for representing constituent generation and treatment
(Wong et al. 2005). UVQ’s daily time-step stormwater model was ‘calibrated’ to MUSIC’s
outputs, so stormwater could be included in an integrated assessment of the water
balance. UVQ was able to determine the volumetric reliability of the servicing options (i.e.
the percentage of demand met over the modelling period); the loads of constituents of
each stream in the water cycle; demand shortfalls; optimal sizes of greywater and
rainwater tanks; and the interactions of streams (e.g. wastewater and stormwater).
No runoff data for the study area or similar catchments was available so calibration was
limited. The only calibration undertaken was setting the annual volumetric runoff coefficient
to 35%. This value is based on the assumption that the study area would have higher
runoff coefficients than most other Australian catchments given the very high annual
rainfall (1130 mm per year) and steep slopes. Fleming, 1994, collated data on volumetric
runoff coefficients around Australia. The upper range for the volumetric runoff coefficient
was found to be 35%, so this has been assumed for this study.
Daily rainfall and evaporation data spanning 1960-2005 was sourced from SILO data drill
(www.nrm.qld.gov.au/silo/datadrill/) and used for UVQ modelling. Six minute rainfall data
spanning one year (1968) from the closest gauging station (Mt St. Leonard, station number
86241) was used for MUSIC modelling and was sourced from the Bureau of Meteorology.
Geographical and topographical data (Table 2) was obtained from Yarra Valley Water, the
Australian Bureau of Statistics and aerial photography.
End use data was provided by Yarra Valley Water. It was derived from metered values for
properties with mains connection and then downscaled to reflect the reduced demand due
to reliance on rainwater tanks. End use figures for the urine separated stream (Options
2.1, 2.2 and 2.3) were adopted from the Dubbleten case study (Peterson 2001).
Table 3: End Use Figures
Options 2.1, 2.2
Options 1.1 and Options 1.1 and Options 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3
1.2 (l/c/day) 1.2 (l/hh/day) and 2.3 (l/c/day) (l/hh/day)
Kitchen 16 46 16 46
Bathroom 65 186 65 186
Toilet 23 66 5 14
Laundry 26 74 26 74
Urine 0 0 11 31
Outdoor 29 84 29 84
Total 159 456 152 436
Constituent data was sourced from published literature (Table 4). Whilst they are not
specific for the study area they should provide a reasonable estimate of loads and are
accurate enough for scenario comparison.
RESULTS
Analysis of the water and contaminant balance results (Table 5 and Table 6) suggests that
Option 2.2C is the best servicing option. It has the highest volumetric reliability, lowest
output flows, lowest constituent loads to the wastewater stream and slightly higher
stormwater flows and constituent loads. This was achieved through the utilization of the
most infrastructure and most plumbing connections. Option 2.2B and 2.1B achieved
similar volumetric reliability results despite no greywater being plumbed to the laundry in
Option 2.2B and no greywater being plumbed to the toilet or laundry in Option 2.1B. Option
2.1A and 2.2A had lower volumetric reliabilities and slightly higher nitrogen loads to land,
but they did not have greywater treatment and storage. The use of greywater (Options
2.1A, 2.1B, 2.2A, 2.2B, 2.2C) significantly reduced the wastewater flow.
Urine separation was shown to significantly reduce nitrogen loads to wastewater.
Comparison of Option 2.3 with Option 1.1 shows that 690 kg of nitrogen was collected by
the urine tanks. A storage volume of between 1.2 kL and 6 kL for each house, depending
on the amount of water used for flushing, is required for 6-monthly storage of urine.
Comparison of Option 1.1 and 1.2 shows that septic tanks reduced the nitrogen load to the
wastewater stream by 204 kg per year and suspended solids by 3000 kg per year. They
had virtually no impact on phosphorous loads.
Options 1.1 and 1.2 have the least water supply infrastructure and, because of this,
delivered the lowest volumetric reliability (90.4%) and highest continuous days of failure
(49). As the water supply infrastructure is improved, the volumetric reliabilities increase
and the continuous days of failure decrease. Adding greywater diversion to the garden
increases volumetric reliability to 94.4% (Option 2.1A) and reduces continuous failure days
to 48. If greywater is diverted to the toilet also (Option 2.2A), the volumetric reliability
increases to 95.0% and continuous failure days reduces to 47. Greater reductions in
continuous failure days are achieved by adding a greywater treatment and storage system.
When these systems supply the garden (Option 2.1B), continuous failure days reduce to
17 (and at the same time increase volumetric reliability to 99.7%). This can be further
improved by plumbing the greywater to the toilet (Option 2.2B) as continuous failure days
reduce to 5 and volumetric reliability increases to 99.9%. Demand is almost entirely met by
connecting the greywater to the laundry also (Option 2.2C). Only 1 kL of demand is not
met in the entire modelling sequence out of a total of 10485 kL.
DISCUSSION
Greywater treatment and storage can significantly improve volumetric reliability and
decrease sewage volume discharge. It improves volumetric reliability of supply and
reduces the number of continuous failure days (i.e. improves the recovery of the supply)
because it is a supplementary supply source to the rainwater tank. This also means risk of
failure of supply is reduced and resilience of the system to shock (e.g. a cracked rainwater
tank) is improved. Using greywater for garden application also has minimal impact on
contaminant loads to land; it only increases nitrogen loads by ~15% for this study. (It
should be noted that higher density areas and / or areas with less rainfall will have a higher
percentage increase in contaminant loads to land when greywater is used for garden).
If optimization of volumetric reliability were the only objective, treating and storing
greywater should be considered ahead of plumbing greywater to multiple end uses.
Additional plumbing only marginally increases volumetric reliability. Connecting greywater
to the toilet rather than the garden only, increases volumetric reliability from 94.4% to
95.0% for untreated greywater; and from 99.7% to 99.9% for treated and stored greywater.
Far more benefit would be gained from treating and storing the greywater rather than
additional connections to end uses because the reliability gains are greater (94.4% to
99.7% for garden connection) and (95.0% to 99.9% for garden and toilet connection). It is
a similar story when assessing maximum continuous days of failure.
Separation and storage of the urine stream, provided there is a nearby agricultural use,
can also contribute to making peri-urban servicing sustainable. It can reduce nitrogen and
phosphorous in the wastewater stream by ~81% and ~31% (comparison of Options 1.1
and 2.3). Wilsenach and Van Loosdrecht (2004) have already shown that removing urine
from the wastewater stream can increase the treatment efficiency of wastewater treatment.
Provided a nearby agricultural use can be found for the urine, separation of the urine from
the wastewater stream should be seriously considered as a servicing alternative.
The water and contaminant balance results aid in decision making, however other factors
such as financial cost, social impacts and life cycle assessments would further inform the
decision making process. The water and contaminant balance demonstrates that from a
technical design perspective, options such as greywater reuse and urine separation
contribute towards sustainable solutions for backlog areas. Prior to implementing them,
community approval and financial costing would be required. A life cycle assessment
would also provide further context to decision making by assessing wider environmental
impacts (such as energy and embodied environmental impacts of the infrastructure). A life
cycle assessment has been completed and will be described in a future paper.
The water and contaminant balance could also be improved by assessing variation in
occupancy rates, roof areas, water demand and tank volumes. Whilst the conclusions of
the study would be unlikely to change, the results would be put in context as the variation
of reliabilities and contaminant loads from property to property would be known.
CONCLUSION
Alternative servicing configurations of low-density, peri-urban backlog areas can contribute
towards sustainability. Rainwater tanks and greywater reuse in combination are capable of
reliably supplying water for both indoor and outdoor use. Greywater application to land will
only have a minor impact on overall contaminant loads to land given the low-density and it
will significantly reduce the volume and loading to the sewage treatment plant. Urine
separation and storage, provided there is a nearby use for the collected urine, could also
be used to significantly reduce contaminant loads to the wastewater stream, thereby
improving wastewater treatment efficiency.
Greywater tanks and separation of the urine stream can contribute towards achieving a
sustainable service for this study area; however they will only be implemented if they are
accepted by land owners and financial costs are met by either the water authorities and /
or the land owners. The social and financial aspects have to be further investigated.
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