Obarska-Pempkowiak H., Gajewska M., Wojciechowska E., Pempkowiak J. Treatment Wetlands for Environmental Pollution Control

Springer International Publishing, 2015. —169 p. — ISBN: 978-3-319-13793-3, 978-3-319-13794-0GeoPlanet: Earth and Planetary SciencesWater and wastewater management in urbanized areas has been resolved, although sewage sludge created in the course of sewage treatment causes problems. Against this background rural areas, particularly in areas characterized by dispersed distribution of households suffer from the lack of wastewater treatment systems. The problem is aggravated by the increasing use of water due to rising civilization standards. The problem has grown to a scale that no doubt must be resolved in the near future. The most serious faults caused by untreated wastewater being discharged into the environment is pollution of surface and groundwater, and eutrophication of water bodies even in the touristically attractive regions.
In Europe, a substantial proportion of households in rural areas have the socalled dispersed infrastructure (in Poland 26 % of households are separated from each other by 100 m or more). Construction of a sewerage system in such areas is economically ineffective. Moreover, when constructed the sewerage systems suffer from high operation costs.
Experience gained so far clearly shows that facilities composed of a septic tank and treatment wetland can treat wastewater effectively in the rural areas. However, the development of hydrophyte systems has led to complex facilities enabling efficient removal of not only organic matter and nutrients, but xenobiotics as well. Treatment wetland systems have been applied with success to purposes as distant from the original application as dewatering and stabilization of sewage sludge, treatment of landfill leachate, treatment of reject waters from sewage sludge processing, treatment of surface run-off, treatment of industrial water and wastewater, and others.
In this book, all these applications are described based on the authors’ own experience and the literature review. The one subject that is not directly related to treatment is generation of humic-like substances that are produced in the course of treatment of wastewater in treatment wetland systems and traditional plants.