This report deals with whether the experience of odors, i.e., odors as sensations, from biosolids at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) causes illness. There exists no repository of information on the numbers of complainants with illness, their specific complaints, or the relationship between degree of exposure and complaints. Anecdotal reports nevertheless imply a pattern much like that associated with other industrial malodors. Any connection between odor and illness has received little note among the millions of articles in the medical literature. This state of affairs presumably exists...

The primary objective of this project was to identify and communicate the benefits and risks of disinfecting wet weather flows by evaluating available disinfection technologies and identifying disinfection by-products and their potential risks to aquatic and human life. A decision-making framework was developed that could be used as a model to guide combined sewer overflow (CSO), sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) and stormwater (SW) disinfection control policies. This project was implemented as a case study in collaboration with the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection...

Outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis throughout the world, especially the massive outbreak in Milwakee in 1993 drew public attention to the quality of drinking water supplies and to the efficiency of water treatment methods. Cryptosporidiosis is a severe gastrointestinal disease caused by the transmissive form of Cryptosporidium parvum protozoan and its oocysts. Digestion of as few as 30 oocysts may be fatal to infants, elderly and immunocompromized persons. C. parvum oocysts are ubiquitous in untreated water and extremely resistant to harsh environmental conditions including standard water...

Water resource management in the United States is evolving in the face of continuing challenges to protect water quality, provide adequate quantities of water for competing uses, and protect habitat and other natural resources. In many jurisdictions and agencies this evolution is increasingly leading toward adoption of watershed management. This approach is characterized by planning and decision making on a watershed scale, integration of a variety of competing water resource priorities and goals, cooperation of multiple stakeholders and governmental agencies, and increased levels of public...

The ability to measure sludge network strength is important in sludge dewatering applications because it can be used to determine optimum polymer dose for conditioning to achieve good dewaterability. This was demonstrated in laboratory and in full-scale dewatering and thickening. The network strength increased as the polymer dose was increased, however, at the optimum dose a "drop" in the network strength occurred. Further research is needed to verify this concept at full scale and to provide a robust technology to the water and wastewater treatment industry. A second phase is sought through...

Biological wastewater treatment plants can be adversely affected by influent toxicity. The effects can range from poor clarifier biomass settling and elevated effluent BOD and ammonia levels to total plant kills. These problems could be minimized or eliminated if an effective method existed for continuously monitoring biological wastewater treatment plant influent for toxicity to the treatment plant microorganisms. Current influent screening methods have not been proven to be adequate for adaptation to continuous screening in the field. The primary reasons include the batch-wise nature of the...

Over the past 20 years, the use of Best Management Practices (BMPs) in the United States has been instrumental in reducing both the detrimental impacts to receiving water quality and the exacerbated flooding caused by urbanization and storm water drainage. More recently, Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) have started to be used in the United Kingdom. Both SUDS and BMPs attempt to mimic the drainage patterns of the natural watershed, and can also provide a degree of treatment needed to improve the quality of the water discharged to an acceptable level. The costs of conventional...

Treatment of drinking water was once considered sufficient for reducing the risk of infection from pathogenic organisms. However, as our knowledge of established and emerging pathogens in water has expanded, so has the need to examine their occurrence, distribution, risk to humans, and control through treatment. The increased need for wastewater reuse has resulted in attention now being focused on wastewater treatment processes and their ability to reduce the numbers of pathogenic organisms to acceptable levels. A public health concern with wastewater is the potential for transmission of...

There is a pressing need for developing and testing a general set of theories in order to provide a confident basis for prediction of multiple stressor effects. Confident prediction is central to confident decision making in water pollution control. Consequently, WERF commissioned this study, which has as its goal to provide a study design based on good science that helps establish a general, conceptual approach to multiple stressors. The objectives addressed in this report are: (1) review and critique the existing body of knowledge for multiple stressors; (2) develop a searchable, annotated...

Municipalities not only have a need for purely transactional systems (accounting, personnel, billing, etc.), but they also need to integrate the sophisticated analytical tools that are used to address the scientific or engineering issues that are very important for the performance of wastewater utility. Most commercially available systems are structured to function within the transactional paradigm and may be inadequate for full range of business processes encountered in a wastewater utility. Wastewater utilities are overwhelmed with data, yet often, managers do not have enough information to...