Small Wastewater Treatment Plants in Switzerland.doc

Waf. Sci. Tech. Vol. 22, No. 3/4, pp. 1-8, 1990. Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved.  0273-1223/90 $0·00 + ·50 Copyright ? IAWPRC  SMALL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS IN SWITZERLAND Markus Boller* and Gieri Deplazes** *Swiss Federal Institute for Water Resources and Water  Control (EA WA G), CH-8600 Dubendorf, Switzerland * * Environmental Protection Office of the Canton of the Grisons, CH-7001 Chur, Switzerland ABSTRACT In Switzerland, the installation of small treatment plants in rural areas is being and will be inten s if i ed. In o rder to remove the numerou s s mall polluti o n sites, new guidelines have been established in which basic information i s given on the procedure of how to consider local circumstances of wastewater character- istics and of how to integrate local quality requirements of the receiving water into the design of small plants. The statistics on small treatment plants show a preferential application for extended aeration, RBCs and trick- ling filters. Due to the lack of skilled operation and maintenance, the per- formance of small treatment plants is not always satisfactory. New economic, reliable and less service-demanding methods are increasingly studied and applied. KEYWORDS Small wastewater source; small treatment plant; water pollution; rural areas; receiving water; treatment technology  INTRODUCTION In Switzerland more than 900 wastewater treatment plants serve about 90 % of the population. Considering the countrywide .statistics of treatment plants (p.e.) in different size classes, the majority of the treatment plants are of rather small siie, the amount of for only 2% of the total discharges. Therefore, the pollution caused by the residual substances contained in the larger discharges has a mUch stronger impact on the receiving waters than the numerous small and often not yet treated wastew.ater sources in rural areas. loads could lead to the conclusion that wa