Development of Compliance Checklists for Wastewater Treatment Plants - Dissertation Example

?Compliance Checklists for Wastewater Treatment Plants Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Inserts 11.03.2012 Executive summary This report discusses the management of wastewater treatment processes aimed at ensuring environmental safety for disposable material. The report critically analyses the processes involved within the procedures for treatment of wastewater in minimizing the pollution effects caused by wastewater. The report explains the processes included within the wastewater treatment procedure of cleansing sewage material. The wastewater treatment procedures remain essential in the overall waste management processes. The report identifies the essential wastewater management regulations provided by regulating authorities. The regulations discussed in this report remain fundamental in enabling a comprehensive checklist for the process of wastewater processing. The processes highlighted within this report describe the possible opportunities for improvement within the existing checklists. This report defines the essential elements of compliance checklists that could be changed in ensuring compliance with environmental regulations. The regulations provided assist the developers of the checklist in identifying the different aspects of waste management processes requiring improvement. Improvements to the existing management processes could essentially ensure sustainability of wastewater disposal. The report presents a discussion of the prevailing problems within the wastewater disposal procedures. The management of the processes involved in wastewater disposal continues to cause difficulties in terms of implementation. Implementation of the processes requires development of checklists aimed at ensuring the entire process remains compliant with the environment regulations. The environment regulations remain the fundamental base for developing of proper compliance checklists for wastewater treatment plants. The report further identifies the various components of the development approval aimed at ensuring comprehensibility of the developed checklist. Introduction The compliance of wastewater treatment plant with required regulations remains essential in the overall process of waste management. Proper operating procedures need to be adopted by wastewater treatment plants in ensuring production of safe products free from environmental contaminants. The management of waste disposal remains a critical element in environment conservation that requires critical assessment. Different waste management processes could be applied in ensuring that the disposal of waste, produced within different areas, remains safe to the environment. The environment remains the biggest concern when developing waste management procedures. While some wastes could be classified as biodegradable, others contain chemicals with potential environmental hazards. Waste management processes seek to develop disposal methods having limited negative environmental impacts. Proper waste disposal method could potentially increase the safety of environment through reduction of pollutants. The disposal of effluent material remains critical as these materials might contain harmful elements within the liquid. While solid wastes can be sorted physically, liquid wastes contain dissolved and suspended materials, which could cause adverse environmental effects. Majority of the effluent materials require specialized analysis before disposal to establish their safety in disposing. The process of disposing these materials includes utilization of industrial processes for filtering the harmful elements, dissolved or suspended within the effluent material. The industrial process of treating effluent material causes numerous environmental challenges to the involved parties. The process requires the establishment of proper procedures for ensuring the safety of the process. During the treatment process, the treatment plant also presents a challenge for handling the waste material released by the plant. The imminent hazards produced by effluent necessitate implementation of regulations regarding the disposal of liquid waste material. Through industrial processes, effluent material can be converted to usable products. Literature review The treatment of wastewater could be defined as the process seeking to remove contaminants present within the wastewater, essentially making the wastewater environmentally safe for utilization in different purposes. The process normally includes chemical and physical processes for removing contaminants within effluents, making the effluents usable. The fundamental objectives of wastewater treatment remain creating environmentally-safe fluids, from effluent, for recycling or disposal. Production of environmentally-safe effluent could essentially minimize the pollution effects of wastewater. Through technological methods, effluents can essentially be converted to safe drinking water, minimizing the pressure exerted on natural resources by populations through reusing. Through recycling processes, effluent could be disposed safely without causing any notable environmental harm. The treatment process for wastewater remains entirely dependent of the source of effluent. According to Khopkar (2004) the process utilizes different methods for domestic and industrial wastewater owing to the existing differences in constituents of the wastewater. Industrial wastewater contains numerous chemicals that could potentially cause significant harm to the environment. While the domestic wastewater treatment might be conducted using simple processes, the industrial wastewater requires utilization of specialized treatment processes. These processes for treating industrial wastewater remain subject to various regulations and standards imposed by governing authorities. While treatment of domestic wastewater could be performed in proximity to the source, industrial wastewater treatment requires construction of pipes for transporting the effluent from the production site to the processing plant. According to Tchobanoglous (2003) the treatment process, for industrial and domestic purposes, follows a similar method within the procedure. The process includes three treatment stages namely; primary, secondary and tertiary treatment utilized for both industrial and domestic purposes. The primary stage does not comprise any dispensation of the waste as the effluent remains held for solid materials to settle. This stage could essentially be defined as the separation stage for solid and liquid materials. Following this stage, any settled and floating material become separated for the liquid. The secondary stage utilizes the liquid from the primary stage. This liquid essentially constitutes of dissolved biological or chemical wastes within the liquid material. This process aims at removing dissolved and suspended materials within the liquid. The secondary treatment removes micro-organisms within treated water before disposing the liquid (Henze, 2002). Following this stage, the treated water might be cleared for use or disposal without subjection to tertiary treatment. This process involves specialized treatment of wastewater before final disposal. These processes at times include disinfection of wastewater to kill any living micro-organisms present. While all wastewater products must undergo the previous treatment stages, the tertiary stage becomes necessary following analysis of the materials after the secondary stage. Material declared environmentally safe, after the secondary stage, could be disposed without subjection to the tertiary stage. The tertiary stage could, therefore, be identified as a non-compulsory treatment stage. The subjection of material to this stage follows an analysis of the material after the secondary stage. Discussion Wastewater treatment takes effluents from water users such as private homes, industries or business, as an influent to wastewater treatment facilities. Wastewater Treatment/Sewage Treatment is classified as an Environmental Relevant Activity (ERA) and under the Environmental Protection Act, all Environmental Relevant Activities need to have a Development Permit to be able to operate. These Development Approvals outline a number of license conditions for the wastewater treatment plants, which companies ought to comply with. These license conditions assist companies in ensuring safety conditions when treating wastewater and keeping the required standards within the industry. Complying with regulations and coping with new and changing regulations is a major concern for all wastewater treatment facilities. The effluent could immensely present adverse affects to the environment, and strict regulations should be implemented to ensure the provision of quality drinking water. Following the determination of the water body to be utilized, the department then decides what the chemical and physical criteria should be for the water constituents that allow attainment of that use. For example, in the United States of America, under the Clean Water Act, the dissolved oxygen values of at least 6 ppm or higher remain essential for cold-water fisheries. 5 ppm of DO is required for practically every use except the water that may serve an aesthetic purpose only (Bregman and Mackenthum, 1992) A few factors to be taken into consideration to maintain a continuing water quality planning process to ensure that the standards are met are: Total daily maximum loads Effluent limitations Descriptions of best management practices for municipal and industrial waste treatment Provisions for non-point sources Under the Environmental Protection Act, Department of Environment and Resource Management have issues development approvals to the Sewage Treatment Plants with some of the conditions mentioned by Bregman and Edell. The plant operators have a great responsibility of operating the plant to the best possible practice to provide the best treatment of the effluent possible and ensure the safe condition of the water supplies. The IAP Project had a timeframe of 4 weeks (28 working days). It aimed at developing compliance checklists for the Logan and Redlands Wastewater Treatment plants, to assist Allconnex Water with internal audits. Research included reviewing the development approvals issued to the plants, learning wastewater treatment processes and researching about Environmental compliance. The main challenge, however, was covering all visits to the treatment plants within the given span of time. The implementation of these environmental projects remains essential in ensuring proper handling of domestic and industrial effluent wastes. Numerous elements should to be well thought-out before embarking on the procedure of actualizing the proposed projects. Though disposal of effluent could be classified as necessary undertaking, the method of undertaking the process should follow specified procedures, and meet specified standards. The regulating authorities for waste management procedures implement various regulatory measures aimed at ensuring the treatment processes remains environmentally safe. Environmental sustainability could essentially be achieved through utilization of efficient waste management processes. Development approval According to Vincoli (1993) a development approval needs to identify and establish a system that deals with all the activities being carrying out that have potentially significant impact on the environment. In the case of a WWTP activity, the DA deals with potential release of contaminants to air, water and land. A SBMP must be provided with the identification of real and potential discharge of all contaminants, their ecological impacts and actions to be pursued in preventing environmental harm. This document essentially provides a guideline for documenting prevention measures for hazardous occurrences. The SBMP must also provide crucial information concerning the monitoring programs, and monitoring data as well as the detail for review and continuous improvement program. The DA also contains specific activity information with an acute description of the activity, the site and its surrounding environment. Such information are such as site topography, flood potential areas, description of soil type and biological characteristics of receiving the environment, treatment process and process flow diagrams, identification and description of pump stations and the capacity of the treatment plan and disposal system. Development approval components Within the development approval plan, various elements remain critical to the successful completion of the treatment process. The development plan should ensure inclusion of these elements in the checklist aiming at achieving comprehensive wastewater treatment processes. The development approval needs to ensure the essential elements of the treatment process remain properly analyzed in complying with the provisions of environment protection authorities. Majority of the elements seek to establish environmental safety of the final products released from the wastewater treatment plant. The components included within the development approval need to analyze the different impacts of the released material on the environment. The processing plant remains potentially hazardous owing to the material being handled within the treatment process. The development approval would ensure all materials released during the process do not cause adverse environmental effects. During processing, the plant could release pollutants like carbon dioxide. The development approval would develop a method for handling the pollutants released by the plant in ensuring a safe environment. While cleaning wastewater, the plant could potentially pollute the environment through releasing possible environment pollutants. Necessity arises for the development approval to contain a safe operating procedure for ensuring the treatment plant does not release toxic elements into the environment. A critical aspect for the development approval becomes a self-monitoring and reporting procedure. Through this procedure, the development approval could potentially minimize the possibilities of causing environment pollution through the treatment process. Self-monitoring and reporting could ensure that possible problems within the plant become addressed quickly in enhancing environmental safety. Breakdowns within the plant could cause leakages of the contained wastes, potentially presenting a surmountable danger to the environment (Tammemagi, 1999). The components should include a plan for certification of the processes in the processing of the wastewater. The certification process would become fundamental in ensuring the development approval completely complies with the regulations implemented by the authorities. The development approval would allow for checking of the processes involved in waste management to ensure reduction of imminent risks. Checking for certification would enable the process complies with regulations provided by the authorities. The development approval would contain a system for checking compliance with regulations. The system would present the checklist with different methods for checking the compliance. Site based management system The principle of a SBMP is to exhibit that persons implementing environmentally applicable activities have in position a structured program that: • set the ecological objectives or principles to be achieved; • identifies the latent environmental damage which may take place from regular operations and comes up with and documents actions to mitigate this destruction as far as workable; • identifies unexpected factors (i.e. abnormal process, emergency) that may origin environmental impairment and establish and documents unforeseen event plans to deal with these; • ensures all personnel carrying out the action are responsive of the environmental risk, and are taught in the procedures and contingency tactics to handle them; • Implements checking of environmental presentation to ensure the efficacy of the measures and eventuality plans; • assists the communique of ecological information all the way through the association and to the administer authority; and • provides for continual improvement. A typical structure for a SBMP includes procedures and processes that are designed and implemented to manage actual and potential releases of contaminants that may be associated with the site activity. At minimum, SBMP must identifies and addresses key elements called activity specific information and assign responsibility for any actions to particular roles in a specified organizational constitution that is built-in and maintained as a fraction of the map (DERM, 2009). The SBMP is normally structured as follow: First is a general introduction that presents short background information concerning the plant and generally the SBMP’s objectives and scope. The next section is about the existing environment, where the location of the site is described as well as a thoughtful description of the surrounding environment: soil topology and topography (important in case of Acid Sulphate Soil presence), the available surface water and ground water around the plant, the potential Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) and the climatology of the site. The third part of the SBMP is the assessment of the environmental aspects and impacts in relevance to the regulation, the license number and the ERA classification while the fourth part of the SBMP deals with the environmental management of the different management systems: air, surface water, ground water, noise, waste, effluent, dangerous and hazardous materials and contingency and emergency plans. SBMP used to be referred as the best practice for DERM regarding environmental management system but with the development of Integrated Environmental Management Plan in conjunction to the creation of the ISO 14001 standard, SBMP appears to be out of date in term of achieving best environmental outcomes and to encourage companies to go “beyond compliance”. Wastewater treatment plant After conducting analysis for all the wastewater treatment plants DAs, it becomes essential to evaluate the required regulations to be complied before implementing the development approvals. The focus for the project becomes identifying the necessary documentation for implementation, and proposing the best structure for adoption. The chosen structure ought to comply with the required regulations presented by the regulating authority. According to Lemann (2008) the chosen method of processing should seek to achieve efficient wastewater management through utilisation of improved treatment procedures. Various reasons occur for integrating procedural changes within the new treatment process. These critical changes would ensure the improvement of the treatment process in terms of quality and process timing. The developed checklist needs to ensure that the plant complies with all provisions of the regulating authorities. While ensuring compliance with essential regulations, the processing plant should provide safe wastewater management processes. The provision of these basic operational regulations would improve service delivery from the treatment plant. The checklist should be developed providing for different check depending of the sources fro the wastewater. Checking the compliance of the treatment plant with necessary regulations remains essential in ensuring the products coming form the plant comply with environment safety regulations. A wastewater treatment plant could be constructed in different locations based on the regulation provided by environmental regulations. According to Qasim (1999) the construction of these plants relies heavily on the volumes of wastes produced. Development of a wastewater treatment plant remains viable towards enabling sustainable environments. The regulations provided by authorities regarding waste management provide significant support for the development of a wastewater treatment plant. This plant aims at ensuring the wastewater becomes harmless for disposal. The potential hazards presented by the effluents necessitate construction of wastewater treatment plants. The development of a wastewater treatment plant follows an environmental analysis assessing the sustainability of the plant. The plant could present surmountable benefits to the environment regarding pollution and degradation. The challenges presented during the construction of this plant would include the compliance to the regulations stipulated by the authorities. The development of the plant must comply with all provisions of environment regulating authorities. Conclusions Various challenges continue to prevail within the waste management processes both domestically and within industries. The management of solid waste does not present the surmountable challenges presented by effluents from sewages. Garvin (1995) notes that the major challenge caused by effluents remains the presence of dissolved, harmful material within the effluents. While pollutants within solid wastes could be identified physically, harmful elements within effluent need specialized methods of identifying the hazardous materials contained within the effluents. Management of effluents, therefore, presents a bigger challenge than the solid wastes. The process of developing proper methods of disposing effluents remains critical due to the imminent hazards presented by these materials. Various factors require consideration before adopting a method for disposing wastewater. Among the fundamental issues for consideration include compliance with regulations from authorities. The provisions of these regulations provide guidelines during the process of planning for wastewater management. The site based management system provides a methodology for undertaking efficient wastewater management system. Implementation of such system, however, requires extensive researching into the sustainability of the project. The analysis essentially enables organizations to develop proper wastewater disposal systems complying with the provided regulations. The proposals presented by development approvals form the basis for decision-making regarding waste management systems to be adopted. The implementation of site-based management systems remains attractive and essentially reduces the costs incurred in transporting the material for processing elsewhere. Many industries have adopted this method of processing wastewater on site for safety purposes. Though the method remains attractive, it involves numerous activities and stages from inception to completions. Development of wastewater treatment plants potentially improves the effects of effluent pollution within the environment. References Arundel, J. (2000) Sewage and industrial effluent treatment (2nd edition). London: Blackwell Science Ltd. Garvin, M. L. (1995) Infectious waste management: a practical guide. London: Lewis Publishers. Henze, M. (2002) Wastewater treatment: biological and chemical processes (3rd edition). Berlin: Springer. Khopkar, S. M. (2004) Environmental Pollution Monitoring And Control. New Delhi: New Age International Lemann, M. F. (2008) Waste Management. Bern: International Academic Publishers. Mackenthun, K. M. & Bregman, J. I. (1992) Environmental Regulations Handbook. Chelsea: Lewis Publishers, Inc. Qasim, S. R. (1999) Wastewater treatment plants: planning, design, and operation. Lancaster: Technomic Pub. Co Rhyner, C. R. (1995) Waste management and resource recovery. London: Lewis Publishers. Tammemagi, H. Y. (1999) The Waste Crisis: Landfills, Incinerators, and the Search for a Sustainable Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tchobanoglous, G., et al (2003) Wastewater Engineering Treatment Disposal Reuse (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Vincoli, J. W. (1993) Basic Guide to Environmental Compliance (Wiley Basic Guide Series). (1st Edition). New York: John Wiley and sons. Read More