Eco Machine Proposal for Lawrence Wastewater Plant
18 January 2006
Within the Wakarusa Water Reclamation PAC, there is a
sub-group of about seven of us that will be bringing a proposal to this
Wednesday's PAC meeting. We would like to have fifteen minutes at the
beginning of Wednesday's meeting to present our findings.
We are proposing that the scope of the PAC responsibilities to be expanded
beyond simply advising on site selection for a pre-determined centralized
activated sludge treatment facility. For the sake of economics, ecology
and efficient long range planning, before any site is chosen, three things need
to be studied in depth and determined.
1) Wholistic system wide research must be undertaken to
evaluate smaller and modular treatment facilities, distributed in multiple
sub-watershed locations within the projected future urban growth area.
2) Several treatment process technologies must be investigated to determine
which one (or combination of several) can best serve our needs for performance,
cost, impact on our natural wetlands and rivers, and use of the best sewage
collection network options.
3) The entire sewage collection system must be evaluated on shortcomings of the
existing network, the over abundance of pump stations and force mains, and
future potential to operate on gravity alone, while possibly reducing the
number of current force mains.
Our sub-group understands from our research that by adopting Eco Machine®
technology (a marriage of technology and biology), Lawrence's future water
restoration can meet permit requirements, can achieve lower capital costs and
lower operational costs, can have greater flexibility of build-out phasing, can
have greater flexibility of site locations, and can enjoy a treatment process
that is beautiful, has no offensive odors, and eliminates the explosive and
hazardous chlorine inherent in an activated sludge process.
To this point in the proceedings, we feel the PAC is no more than a glorified
focus group, being led by the hand though a series of exercises of
pre-determined criteria that merely enforce a pre-determined centralized
activated sludge facility. The "weighting" of the criteria
evaluation is hardly scientific methodology. And the PAC input is nothing
that the engineering team could not do themselves by plugging numbers into some
computerized equation.
The PAC potentially has much brainpower, and could be put to
serious use actually studying real options and scenarios for the above three
suggested responsibilities. If the PAC existence is to fulfill some
Federal or State public participation requirement, we think our current tasks
fall far short of such requirements. But Lawrence should empower our
citizen group PAC for no other reason than to help guide our community towards
choosing the best Wakarusa Basin Water Reclamation Facilities that 21st century
technology can provide.
Therefore, we are asking for fifteen minutes at the
beginning of Wednesday's meeting to present the materials on Eco Machines® and
decentralized wastewater technology. We look forward to the discussion on
Wednesday and our hopefully expanded role of the PAC.
Respectfully submitted,
Michael Almon
for the Eco Machine® Sub-Group of the PAC
e-mailed to City Commission, 15 January 2006