Filter Technology Integrated Wastewater Irrigation and.pdfVIP

Filter Technology: Integrated Wastewater Irrigation and Treatment, a Way of Water Scarcity Alleviation, Pollution Elimination and Health Risk Prevention 1 1 2 2 2 Cheng Xianjun , Gao Zhanyi , N. Jayawardane , J. Blackwell , T. Biswas Abstract The use of urban wastewater in agriculture is a widely established practice for alleviating water scarcity situations and reducing or even eliminating the purchase of chemical fertilizers. However, unregulated irrigation wi th untreated wastewater poses serious public health risks, as sewage is a major source of excreted pathogens that cause gastro-intestinal infections in human beings. Wastewater may also contain highly poisonous chemical toxins from industrial sources that ma y cause much more serious long-te rm health risks. Reuse after proper treatment is normally recommended as the main solution of preventing health risks. Unfortunately, because of the high cost of engineering plants, most cities in developing countries do not have sufficient wastewater treatment capacity, and the perspectives of the capacity increasing in these cities are bleak. Planned and regulated wastewater irrigation with crop limitations and proper irrigation methods (for example local irrigation) may to some extent, prevent health risks. But for a given territory, it is often impossible to limit the type of crops to be grown. This paper introduces the FILTER (Filtration and Irrigated cropping for Land Treatment and Effluent Re-use) technique, an improved land treatment technique developed at CSIRO, Australia and tested both in Australia and China. FILTER combines the use of nut