There are almost a hundred permanently inhabited islands in the Archipelago Sea without a fixed road connection. All transports are challenging as we rely on connecting vessels and our own boats.
During the summer, the population of the islands will at least double and the capacity of municipal wastewater treatment plants will be extreme. Treatment of sewage sludge when dimensioned for sewage from old municipal settlements.
– Sludge is waste and must not be discharged into your own forest or fields without sanitizing. So they are transported from the outer archipelago to inland treatment plants, which is expensive because only a couple of the sludge from the property can be taken out at a time, says Petri Huovila, the environmental inspector of the city of Parainen.
There are almost a hundred permanently inhabited islands in the Archipelago Sea without a fixed road connection. All transports are challenging as we rely on connecting vessels and our own boats. During the summer, the population of the islands will at least double and the capacity of municipal wastewater treatment plants will be extreme. Treatment of sewage sludge when dimensioned for sewage from old municipal settlements.
– Sludge is waste and must not be discharged into your own forest or fields without sanitizing. So they are transported from the outer archipelago to inland treatment plants, which is expensive because only a couple of the sludge from the property can be taken out at a time, says Petri Huovila, the environmental inspector of the city of Parainen.
The aim is to treat the sludge at its place of origin
According to the Pargas Environmental Office, the smartest thing for the environment and the economy is to return nutrients to the country and utilize them locally. In this case, sludge transport by connecting vessels will be eliminated and the nutrient cycle in the islands will remain in balance.
– The nutrients have come from the country and should be returned there. Municipal treatment plants discharge treated wastewater into the sea, and although it is 90% clean, nutrients burden the water body. It is better that the nutrients are absorbed into the soil on your own property, Huovila emphasizes.
Payback times for new solutions are short
There are methods by which sludge is managed in an environmentally friendly manner and in accordance with regulations on its own site at the cost of a few sludge transports.
– A so-called sludge dryer can be used with the settling well, in which case the contents of the well are pumped to the sludge dryer and the liquid flows back into the settling well. The recovered cocoa sludge can be composted on your own property, says Huovila.
However, sludge dryers are not suitable for use with closed tanks (wc-waters). If you want to get rid of sea transport, you must convert the closed tank to a settling tank and install a sewage treatment system. Self- draining sludge must always be reported to the waste management authority.
– It is easiest if the plot has a dry toilet and only washing water is generated. Solids from the gray water precipitation tank can be scraped into the compost. Today, there are also numerous gray water treatment plants of various sizes where sludge accumulates in the filter and no sludge drains need to be performed at all.
Archipelago residents should consider handling sludge on their own, as long as it is done correctly and the sludge recovery is notified to the Waste Management Committee, Huovila sums up.