Practical Aspects, Logistical Challenges, and Regulatory Considerations for Modeling and Managing Treatment Wetlands in the Canadian Arctic

Management of Tundra Wastewater Treatment Wetlands within a Lagoon/Wetland Hybridized Treatment System Using the SubWet 2.0 Wetland Model

“…Wastewaters intentionally released from waste stabilization ponds (e.g., decanted), unintentionally released as leakage from the detention berms of the ponds (exfiltration) or the natural releases from facultative lakes typically exhibited levels of carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand (cBOD), total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) and microbial indicator organism E. coli and fecal coliforms that were higher than desired by territorial regulatory authorities [10,11,34,35,[37][38][39]. The existing performance data from lagoon systems often does not meet municipal wastewater effluent standards set for southern Canada at 25 mg/L for both BOD and TSS [36].…”

“…In this second scenario we examine how much more wastewater (pre-treatment values) can be passed through the wetland before cBOD 5 exiting the wetland becomes higher than the regulatory standards for southern Ontario. At this time standards have not been set for Canada's Far North because of logistical and environmental issues [35]; for this reason, southern standards at 25 mg/L for the parameters cBOD 5 and 1.25 mg/L for NH 3 -N at 15 ± 1 °C are used in this northern setting [36]. Table 3 summarizes the simulated wastewater quality parameters determined from increasing the flows by 3 to 5 times the current volumes.…”