Renfrew County Suggests Alternative Options for Rural Wastewater Management
Post date: Jan 4, 2011 11:10:26 PM
Originally posted May 17, 2010
One of the factors that degrades water quality in the Bonnechere Watershed is organic pollution, or sewage. Currently, the most common practice for dealing with rural septic tank waste is to spread it on fields to decompose. There are fairly obvious issues in this method of waste management. During heavy rainfall events, septage can be carried directly into lakes and rivers. The influx of raw sewage into these delicate systems causes nutrient loading, which can lead to algal blooms, siltation and increases the likelyhood of the E-coli bacteria. The province of Ontario recognizes the negative environmental and human health impacts in the traditional septic systems, and regulations are moving towards
restricing or even banning this practice. In response to this inevitability, and with the help of the Green Municipal Fund, Renfrew County created a Biosolids and Septage Management Plan in 2005, which suggests eight alternative methods to handle rural sewage.
The following linked documents describe a case study of this project, as well as the actual report itself.
