Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation: Asset or Liability

Historically, wastewater treatment started as risk reduction for human health and welfare, migrated to environmental risk reduction, and has now matured into resource recovery and revenue generation. Technology and common practices are in place to treat water as a sustainable resource; we simply can no longer afford to use it once and "throw it in the ocean" nor can we afford the liability of not treating water to our best abilities to protect human health and the environment. In this interactive online course, we will cover specifics, metrics, and detailed examples about recovery of the "water" from wastewater. We discuss how to manage the design of wastewater facilities to reduce environmental, personal, and public health risk from insufficiently treated potable and reuse water supplies. We will also show how to reduce costs in operation of a proper wastewater treatment plant.