How does the Activated Sludge Water Recycling Plant work?
The District recycles all of its customer’s wastewater for use as landscape irrigations. Using the five senses, the quality of our reuse water after treatment is indistinguishable from our drinking water. The following is a brief description of the wastewater treatment process. Wastewater from the collection system is pumped through a fine screen to remove material that could plug or harm downstream treatment equipment. The wastewater then enters aeration chamber #1, where it is mixed with activated sludge recirculated from the floor of the clarifier-settling basin. Activated sludge is a “soup” of microorganisms that use the organics in the wastewater as food. This dynamic population of microbes removes the soluble organics from the wastewater. The microbes are not added to the wastewater, but are grown from those already present in some numbers. They are typically found in rich garden compost. The ones that proliferate are the particular microbes that are best suited to grow on the ma
