Efficacy of Drinking‐Water Treatment Residual in Controlling Off‐Site Phosphorus Losses: A Field Study in Florida

Abstract

Land application of drinking-water treatment residuals (WTR) has been shown to control excess soil soluble P and can reduce off-site P losses to surface and ground water. To our knowledge, no field study has directly evaluated the impacts of land application of WTRs on ground water quality. We monitored the effects of three organic sources of P (poultry manure, Boca Raton biosolids, Pompano biosolids) or triple superphosphate co-applied with an aluminum-based WTR (Al-WTR) on soil and ground water P and Al concentrations under natural field conditions for 20 mo in a soil with limited P sorption capacity. The P sources were applied at two rates (based on P or nitrogen [N] requirement of bahiagrass) with or without Al-WTR amendment and replicated three times. Without WTR application, applied P sources increased surface soil soluble P concentrations regardless of the P source or application rate. Co-applying the P sources with Al-WTR prevented increases in surface soil soluble P concentrations and reduced P losses to shallow ground water. Total dissolved P and orthophosphate concentrations of shallow well ground water of the N-based treatments were greater (>0.9 and 0.3 mg L(-1), respectively) in the absence than in the presence ( approximately 0.6 and 0.2 mg L(-1), respectively) of Al-WTR. The P-based application rate did not increase ground water P concentrations relative to background concentrations. Notwithstanding, Al-WTR amendment decreased ground water P concentrations from soil receiving treatments with P-based application rates. Ground water total dissolved Al concentrations were unaffected by soil Al-WTR application. We conclude that, at least for the study period, Al-WTR can be safely used to reduce P leaching into ground water without increasing the Al concentration of ground water.

Use of drinking water treatment residuals to control the internal phosphorus loading from lake sediments: Laboratory scale investigation

“…Most of them focused on reusing it as a soil amendment for off-sites P pollution control, or recently, as substrate in constructed wetlands to remove excessive P in wastewater. 18,19 Moreover, in these applications, WTRs did not show any negative effects to environment. 11,12 More recently, studies have found that during the processes of removing excessive P in lake water with several materials including WTRs, WTRs also presented minimum undesirable effects to the water chemistry.…”

Use of Fe/Al drinking water treatment residuals as amendments for enhancing the retention capacity of glyphosate in agricultural soils

“…Due to the strong sorption capacities of Fe/Al WTR, they have been used to mitigate environmental pollution in numerous applications. Notably, Fe/Al WTR have been incorporated into sediments, soils and substrates of constructed wetlands to effectively manage P release from aquatic sediments and off-site transport of P to surrounding aquatic systems, and to adsorb and immobilize metals in polluted soils (Agyin-Birikorang et al, 2009;Elkhatib et al, 2013;Sarkar et al, 2007;Wang et al, 2012Wang et al, , 2013b.…”

Aging of aluminum/iron-based drinking water treatment residuals in lake water and their association with phosphorus immobilization capability

“…Based on these attributes, DWTRs have also been used for environment remediation, typically for P pollution control. DWTRs can be used to immobilize excessive P in soils for off-site P pollution control (Agyin-Birikorang et al, 2009), and as main substrates for constructed wetland to remove excessive P from wastewater (Zhao et al, 2009). More recently, DWTRs have shown a high potential for use by geoengineers in internal P loading control in lakes (Wang et al, 2012a;.…”