The knowledge on purification need not be scalable, because approaches necessary for major urban areas like Delhi or Mumbai are extremely expensive. Smaller towns and cities in high rainfall regions can utilize a set of natural and constructed wetlands to treat wastewater, as the East Kolkata wetlands, and also recover nutrients for vegetable and fish production. Cities not having this possibility (both land and water for wetlands) have to resort to standard physicochemical methods ( primary-tertiary treatment) , water reuse and sludge de-watering/management, and these are vastly more expensive to build, maintain and operate than wetlands. Hence its better to consider a variety of wastewater treatment approaches, given the sheer number of small towns in India, considerable financial resource constraints and urgency of water supply and poillution prevention.
Published by Amartya Saha, Associate Scientist at Florida International University
The knowledge on purification need not be scalable, because approaches necessary for major urban areas like Delhi or Mumbai are extremely expensive. Smaller towns and cities in high rainfall regions can utilize a set of natural and constructed wetlands to treat wastewater, as the East Kolkata wetlands, and also recover nutrients for vegetable and fish production. Cities not having this possibility (both land and water for wetlands) have to resort to standard physicochemical methods ( primary-tertiary treatment) , water reuse and sludge de-watering/management, and these are vastly more expensive to build, maintain and operate than wetlands. Hence its better to consider a variety of wastewater treatment approaches, given the sheer number of small towns in India, considerable financial resource constraints and urgency of water supply and poillution prevention.