From John Todd

TOWARDS A POST ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE ON WASTEWATER

TREATMENT
Conventional chemical and biological wastewater treatment systems are in
widespread use. There exists around them a wealth of literature that detail
operational capacities and technological forms. According to Browne et al (1) this
has perpetuated the myth that water treatment, naturally an ecological process,
can be simplified by excluding complexity above a physiochemical or microbial
level. This perspective has stunted the development of whole systems treatment
technologies and the wastewater field in general.
Part of the difficulty lies not just within the engineering disciplines but within
ecology itself. If natural systems are to provide a realistic alternative there is a
need to develop a method for defining their ecological components including the
biocoenoses or ecologies which comprise the technologies (1). There have been
significant attempts by Adey and Loveland (2) and Todd and Josephson (3) to
articulate an ecological framework for the design of mesocosms, including living
systems for wastewater treatment such as Living Machines. Their perspectives
have been refined in technology review reports and biological reports to the
Massachusetts Foundation for Excellence in Marine and Polymer Sciences over
the past several years. The twelve principles of Living Machine design described
by Todd and Josephson (3) have strongly influenced the evolution of these
technologies. However, while they provide a set of instructions they do not
inherently describe outcomes, or the actual organisms that should be present
within the diversity of life forms.
Contemporary treatment processes for domestic and industrial sewage have
evolved primarily from the requirement to decrease effluent biochemical oxygen
demand (BOD 5) and so protect receiving waters. It is not surprising therefore,
that the performance of a wastewater plant is gauged by this BOD decrease and
is thus designed primarily on the basis of BOD loading. Advanced sewage
treatment methods are process variations which exceed this simple BOD
elimination and deal with biologically refractory materials (collectively expressed
as COD) and phosphorus and nitrogen (Mudrack and Kunst,(4). These methods
remove more contaminants from wastewater than are taken out by conventional
treatment. Examples of advanced sewage treatment include bacterial nitrification
to oxidize ammonia to nitrate and chemical/biological treatment for phosphorus
removal using aluminum, iron and polymer coagulants.
Guterstam (5) has criticized contemporary conventional wastewater treatment.
His basic reasons are as follows:
1: They generate large amounts of sludge which is often toxic and is thus
environmentally stressful if disposed of by ocean dumping, land filling, spreading
or incinerating.

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2: They employ environmentally damaging chemicals to precipitate out solids,

phosphorus and chlorine.
3: They fail to remove metals and synthetic organic compounds.
4: They are costly in terms of financial capital, energy and labor.
5: Engineering difficulties are still incurred with the elimination of fine suspended
solids, colloidal matter and dissolved substances.
Natural aquatic systems, including wetlands, lakes and ponds, have waste
treatment and utilization potential inherent in their dynamics and they have
mechanisms for providing alternatives to the five criticisms above. The challenge
for ecological engineering is to take the mechanisms, pathways, nutrient flows
and organisms found in all of these systems and design them into mesocosms
that are the ecological technologies of the future. What society needs is
integrated waste treatment. In this scenario a waste treatment facility is no longer
a sewage treatment plant. It becomes a nutrient and materials management
system, or a water-based farm with useful products and a viable economy as
central to the design criteria. The South Burlington Living Machine facility is a
move in this direction with fish and botanical crops which are integral to the
waste treatment.
POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH AREAS
The future of integrated treatment will hinge on breakthroughs in the five
following areas.
1: Classification
2: Trophic Management
3: Succession and the Ecology of Invasion
4: Light and Photosynthetic Management
5: Economic Analogs
CLASSIFICATION
There is a need to define the technological potential of the biophysiological
processes integral to water quality change. This involves investigating the bidirectional interactions between water quality and ecological changes. The bidirectional relationship between the abiota and biota of a system represents the
self purification capacity of aquatic systems. At a simple level self purification is
the microbial breakdown of complex organic molecules into simple organic
molecules together with processes of dilution and sedimentation (Mason, 6).
However this is much more complex phenomenom to describe at an
ecotechnological level as compared with a biotechnical one. Odum described self
purification as self-organization and made it clear that natures capacity to do so
was a potentially powerful tool in the design of living technologies (7).
Browne et al (1) have begun to map knowledge between the domains within the
natural sciences, including between the biochemical, biological and ecological

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concepts relevant to water treatment and ecological engineering. Their approach

was in a sense taxonomic.
For them the need was to classify organisms in such a way as to elucidate their
roles as a species and their roles within groups or ecologies. Their goal was to
map the biochemistry of a system onto the ecology of the same system using as
a mapping function a non-Linnaean classification structure. However organism
identification, a Linnaean function, is included as a component of their
classification structure.
Biological or evolutionary classification is not ecological classification, as the
former does not define the biota of natural or ecologically engineered system. On
a biological level organisms are classified using the Linnaean taxonomic system.
What is needed now is an ecological classification system or ecotaxonomy that
can be used to define organisms ecotechnologically with respect to their water
quality transition potential.
The Browne et al (1) taxonomy defines organisms at a primary level as
oxygenators or deoxygenators. Another sub- category defines deoxygenators
(animals and surface shading plants) as air gulpers or air breathing aquatic
animals. These are tolerant of low oxygen and include some insect larvae and
fishes such as the Gouramis. Then they break down the air gulpers into another
subcategory defined by whether they directly or indirectly remove solids from the
water column. This is further broken down into category that states where in the
water column the organisms would be found. The process can create an
ecological family tree for an organism within an ecosystem.
Five ecotypes are created in the classification system.
Using these simple set of distinctions they come up with:
1: Gross oxygenators
2: Gross deoxygenating direct solids removers
3: Gross deoxygenating indirect solids removers
4: Air gulping direct solids removers
5: Air gulping indirect solids removers
Onto these they superimpose spacial and time factors to create 15 ecotaxa or
categories.
The ecotaxa building process then is next compounded with a Saprobic Index
which includes 4 stages and 4 water quality classes.
1: Polysaprobic, the primary process of decomposition in water quality class iv,
which is devoid of oxygen and contains hydrogen sulphide.
2: a-Mesosaprobic, a secondary process of decomposition in water quality class
iii, where oxygen is less than 50% saturated and hydrogen sulphide is absent.
3: b-Mesosaprobic, involving progressive mineralization in water quality class ii,
with oxygen greater than 50% saturation.

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4: Oligosaprobic involving completed mineralization in a class i, oxygen saturated

environment.
This results in a classification system which include 60 ecotaxa. Three examples
here will illustrate the scheme. Tubificid worms (Tubifex tubifex) are
Polysaprobic, benthic feeding direct solids removing gross deoxygenators.
Rotifer (Keratella cochlearis) is a b-Mesosaprobic midwater, direct solid
removing, gross deoxygenator. Blue green alga, Oscillatoria planctonica, is an aMesosaprobic, algal, gross oxygenator.
This classification allows the structuring of valid self-purifying ecologies for waste
treatment. First, it defines organisms in terms of their potential self purification
functionality by relating them to one another in terms of an ecological treatment
hierarchy based upon solids and nutrient transfer.
Secondly, it divides organisms in terms of spatiality of their feeding position and
to other organisms in that space.
Thirdly, it divides into saprobic types which indicates the biochemical
tolerance/intolerance of organisms to the parameter which dictates their
functionality, such as BOD.
Finally, it enables Linnean species as biomonitors to be classed in accordance to
a water quality or water quality change parameter. The overall classification
scheme is a beginning insofar as it amalgamates ecological and waste state
data. From the ecological designers point of view it classifies and defines the
important niches. It can identify the presence or absence of key species groups
in any system. It is the beginning of a new functional taxonomy for ecological
engineering.
TROPHIC MANAGEMENT
In limnology there is a concept which should have great value in ecological
engineering of the future. It is called the trophic cascade concept and the
extensive research has been summarized by Carpenter and Hall (8).
The concept states that nutrient inputs set the potential productivity of lakes and
that deviations from the potential are due to food web effects. Nutrient and food
web effects are complimentary, not contradictory, but they act at different time
scales. Food web effects stem from variability in predator-prey interactions and
their effects on community structure. Acting through selective predation variability
at the top of the food web cascades through zooplankton down to phytoplankton
and microbial communities to influence ecosystem processes.

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Contemporary population biology and community ecology has determined that

consumers are typically selective in the types and sizes of resources they
consume. The result is that selective predation from the top down plays a major
role in community composition at each trophic level. Predatory fish, for example,
determine the size and species composition of planktivorous feeders below them,
and these organisms in turn influence the community of herbivorous zooplankton,
which in turn regulate the amounts and kinds of phytoplankton which compete for
nutrients. This in turn influence the protozoan and microbial community structure.
Protozoa can be dramatically reduced by large zooplankton and bacterial division
and population growth has been shown to be surpressed by the presence of
phytoplankton. Even nutrient levels are determined by cascade concepts. In one
lake system for example predatory insects (Chaoborus) and piscivorous bass
contained 20-25% of the phosphorus (8).
Trophic cascade concepts have been applied to the biomanipulation of lakes
towards humanly determined ends (Gulati et al, 9). This included reducing
hypolimnetic oxygen depletion, blue green algae blooms and littoral
macrophytes. They have rarely been applied to the management of wastewater
mesocosms.
The cellular design of the living machines allows for a high degree of trophic
management. For example, snails, whose eggs are eaten by fish, can be
physically separated from fish confined to specific cells. As a result snail
numbers numbers can increase to the point where they can reduce sludge
volumes dramatically. This has been demonstrated in the test train at South
Burlington. Oxygen can be regulated to favor bacteria over protozoa and further
downstream to reverse the relationship favoring protozoa over bacteria.
Detritivorous fishes and zooplankton be placed at various stages in the process
to influence the ecology and performance. Algae and attached algae
communities can be favored in certain cells to increase nutrient uptake, increase
pH, sequester metals and generate oxygen for free through photosynthesis. All of
these strategies can be made to work on behalf of the performance of the living
system. They do however need to be codified and confirmed through population-performance studies. To my knowledge no research support has ever gone to a
combined taxonomic and treatment performance study of a mesocosm designed
to treat wastes.
SUCCESSION AND THE ECOLOGY OF INVASIONS
If a field is plowed and then left alone, re-invasion takes place. First, annual
weeds take hold, followed by grasses and perennials. After a time a meadow
appears after the major plant groups, cool season grasses, warm season
grasses, legumes and members of the sunflower family become established.
Then in ensuing years woody shrubs invade which set the stage for trees. First
fast growing invasive tree species become established followed in subsequent
years by the forest dominants which provide the framework for an emerging

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woods. Each step in this succession is predicated on the stage before it. Each
stage lays the template for the next. This dynamic process creates structure and
organization, and at each stage the ability of the system to close loops and
manage perturbations increases.
No Living Machine has ever been given the opportunity to go through a
successional process like the one just described. The reason for this is that
Living Machines are relatively isolated from the ecology of invasions. This is due
in part to the fact that they are housed in greenhouses and screen houses or are
located in very urban settings. During ramp up, the Living Machines are seeded
with organisms from wild aquatic environments. This seeding is continued
sporadically for perhaps the first year. After this the systems are typically left to
self organize and self design. They are truncated in successional terms,
remaining at the ecological equivalent of the weedy field. As a consequence the
vast majority of species originally seeded do not find the appropriate conditions
for their survival. System extinction rates are high because the state of the
system is not analagous to the successional stage of the parent or wildsystems
from which the organisms were derived.
James Drake and Stuart Pimm at the University of Tennessee study what it takes
to arrive at an assembly of species that remain in equilibrium a condition that
would be desirable for a Living Machine (10). They undertake experiments with
ecosystems, in computer based artificial life systems and with aquatic organisms
in aquaria. They begin by adding species in various combinations and then
letting them work out who will survive and in what ratio. Eventually, without
intervention, the community shakes down into something that is both complex
and persistentorder for free. According to Pimm We dont get order
immediately. We get it after a long period of adding species to communities and
watching them come in, displace other species, and go extinct in turns In other
words, having a history is what makes a community last.
Stuart Pimm has a Humpty Dumpty hypothesis which is relevant to the
ecological design of living technologies. Pimm maintains that once a community
assembly is destroyed, a forest for example, you cant just plant the same
species back and expect to put it together again. There is no such thing as an
instant forest. It needs a successional history. Some plants will invade and others
will drop out. All the species change the soil and the fauna and flora around
them. They make it possible for the final assembly to be there. For the ecological
engineer the challenge is to get that order relatively quickly. Complex persistent
systems that shake down within a very few years are the goal to which we must
aspire. We do not yet know the capabilities or capacities of a highly evolved,
species rich and persistent Living Machine. There is little doubt that its
performance will surprise us.
LIGHT AND PHOTOSYNTHETIC MANAGEMENT

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Except for the deep water oceanic thermal vents, sunlight is the primary driver for
all persistent ecosystems. Contemporary waste treatment does not use solar
energy as a determinant in the waste conversion process. The original Solar
Aquatic patents, developed by Todd and Silverstein, used clear-sided tanks to
allow for sunlight to penetrate into the cells. These patents have closely held by
their corporate owners and few Solar Aquatic systems have been built.
However Solar Aquatic systems have proven effective at removing heavy metals
via uptake into algae communities which attach to the tank sides, and for
breaking down many of the EPA priority pollutants (3).
At South Burlington sunlight is a primary energy source having supported over
three hundred species of higher plants rafted and grown on the surface of the
tanks and in constructed wetlands within the greenhouse. Supplemental lighting
has not been used at South Burlington other than for visibility after dark.
Horticulture in northern climates is based upon supplemental lighting. Applying
supplemental lighting in the operation of Living Machines should be investigated
in the future. If commercial crops are part of the treatment process, the additional
energy required would be cost effective. Supplemental lighting could also boost
performance through increased plant root growth and production of exudates or
saps from the plant roots which benefit the attached growth microbial
communities.
Living Machines need to utilize sunlight and supplemental light in other ways to
diversify their ecologies. Algae growth in certain cells within the treatment train
needs to be promoted for ecological reasons. Algae are environmental
oxygenators for free, have the ability to neutralize and stabilize pH, consume
excess carbon dioxide, uptake heavy metals and utilize nutrients including
ammonia and phosphorus. It would be wise to direct natural daylight and artificial
light onto selected cells in which no higher plants, which ordinarily shade the
water column, grow. It is proposed that artificial substrates be established, such
as screening, to allow attached algae communities to become part of the Living
Machine community of organisms. These attached algae systems are potent
water purifying systems (2). They belong at about the midpoint in the treatment
process. Algae in the system could be harvested by grazing snails and native
fishes of the Catostomidae family.
It would be interesting to experiment with light concentrators to beam intense
light into algae based cells. Fiber optics might be used here. This would help
compensate for the shading caused by turbidity at the midpoint in the treatment
process. The intense light would allow for a more diverse photosynthetic
community and possibly even more persistent biological structure in the algae
based cells. As long as clear sided tanks are not permitted (patent protection) in
wastewater treatment, concentrating light makes sense and should be explored
technologically. Light is a limiting factor in wastewater treatment. Large amounts
of electrical energy to oxygenate the water are required in conventional systems
to compensate in part for the absence of internal photosynthesis.

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ECONOMIC ANALOGS
The botanical research at South Burlington involving several hundred species of
plants has yielded important information about plant groups and their adaptability
to use in wastewater treatment. Ten families of plants have representatives in the
most favored category. These include Salicaceae (ten species), Araceae (five
species), Cyperaceae (three species) Gramineae (two species) and Iridaceae,
Juncaceae, Marantaceae, Ranunculaceae, Saururaceae, Zingiberaceae each
with one species to date. The majority of these families have representatives that
have commercial value. An example of an economic crop that is a top ranked
plant in the system is the Calla Lily , Zantedeschia aethiopica, in the Araceae
family, It blooms widely throughout the year and most prolifically in May and
June. The flowers retail locally for $ 5 to $ 8 per stem. Calla Lilies represent the
tip of the economic iceberg. Medical, herbal and floricultural plants as well as
valuable trees such as the bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, can be readily
grown in the system. Any effort to link higher plant based waste treatment with
economic crops will pay off and multiple revenue streams for Living Machines.
The same approach can be applied to the water column. Many species of
ornamental fish, pet feed species and bait fish can derive their dietary needs
from biosolids generated within the facility. We have demonstrated in the
Frederick, Maryland, Providence, Rhode Island and San Francisco, Living
Machines that Koi, goldfish, fathead minnows and golden shiners grow well on
solids pumped from clarifiers to fish holding tanks. In the case of Koi and goldfish
they have done well in the clarifiers themselves. Koi purchased in bulk for ninetynine cents apiece had a wholesale value just under ten dollars after nine months
in the Frederick , Living Machine. Fish culture was not an interest for the Living
Technologies Inc. team operating the South Burlington facility. However the
potential for growing fish on waste cycles is being developed by the Ocean Arks
group at the Intervale Living Machine in Burlington, Vermont. It is our view that
Living Machines that treat wastes can become economic engines in their own
right. This should be a major direction for technological innovation.
CONCLUSION
Guterstam rightly criticized many facets of contemporary waste treatment (5).
Many of the criticisms have been countered and solved by the development of
Living Machines, since the first facility was built in Warren, Vermont in 1986. At
South Burlington, as well as at other facilities, the volumes of sludge wasted
have been dramatically reduced. The Living Machine at Findhorn in Scotland has
yet to waste any solids after almost five years of operation. On site management
and treatment of solids has proven feasible at a number of facilities, including
commercial facilities treating food industry wastes. The test train research at
South Burlington suggests that Living Machines can utilize biosolids within
internal food webs.
Guterstams concern about the use of toxic chemicals is avoided through the use
of Living Machines. The only chemical used in South Burlington is methanol This

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source of organic carbon to support denitrification has been eliminated in

treatment line B through the use of endogenous carbon in anoxic reactors.
Work at Providence , Rhode Island and has shown that Living Machines can
sequester heavy metals and produce an effluent that meets drinking water
standards for these elements. The Harwich, Massachusetts Living Machines
demonstrated the removal of synthetic organic chemicals, including fourteen EPA
priority pollutants.
Guterstam was concerned with engineering difficulties within the waste treatment
industry associated with dealing with fine suspended solids and colloidal
materials. These may have been solved, in part, through the incorporation into
Living Machines of higher plants and their root communities, as well as through
the use of ecological fluidized beds (EFBs) and constructed wetland filters.
Finally, Guterstam was critical of the costs of conventional waste treatment
including capital costs, energy, chemicals and labor. While Living Machines to
date have not dramatically reduced the capital or energy costs, they have all but
eliminated the chemical costs. Labor, in most cases, is comparable with the
Living Machine. However as Living Machines increasing become economic
engines, labor costs will be seen as an asset and a resource, rather than a
liability.
The future of Living Machine development lies in improving the ecological
communities within the systems themselves, and in converting them to integrated
resource utilization technologies that are economically defined. Through ecology
and economics lies the future of waste treatment.

REFERENCES
1. Browne, B., R.A.F. Seaton & P. Jeffrey, In press. Some propositions on the
structuring of aquatic ecologies for water treatment. Journal of Environmental
Science and Health.
2. Adey, W. & K. Loveland. 1991. Dynamic Aquaria: Building Living Ecosystems.
Academic Press, San Diego, CA.
3. Todd, J. & B. Josephson, 1996. The design of living technologies for waste
treatment. Ecological Engineering 6 (109-136).
4. Mudrack, J. & D. Kunst, 1985. Biology of Sewage Treatment and Control.
Ellis Horwood Ltd.
5. Guterstam, B. 1996. Ecological engineering for wastewater and its application
in New England and Sweden. Ecological Engineering 6 (96- 108).
6. Mason, J. 1996. The Biology of Freshwater Pollution 3rd Edition, Longman,
UK

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7. Odum, H. T. Environment, Power and Society, 1971. Wiley Interscience, New

York, NY.
8. Carpenter, S. R. & J.F. Kitchell, eds. 1993. The Trophic Cascade in Lakes.
Cambridge University Press.
9. Gulati, R. D. et al, eds. 1990 BiomanipulationTools for Water Management,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
10. Benyus, Janine, 1998. Biomimicry. William and Morrow, New York, NY.

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