Have you ever wondered what happens to the toilet water once it leaves your house?  I know you all secretly have :)  Well, yesterday we went on a tour of one of our local wastewater treatment plants and can share with you the answer to those burning questions.

We began our tour inside to learn about the microorganisms that are vital to the process.  There are called water bears.  The scientific name is Tardigrade.  They are surprisingly super cute little guys! They showed us live ones magnified 400 times running all around the screen looking for things to eat.

We were shown this video from Animal Planet’s show “The Most Extreme”.  Water bears came in number one in their countdown of able to survive the most extreme conditions.  They can even survive in the vacuum of space!

I found that Carolina Biological Supply Company carries them.  I just may need to order some. So cute :)

These cones show how the water looks when it first comes into the plant (on the left) and how it looks just 24 hours after going through the whole process.  This water is called reclaimed water and is used locally to water the many, many gold courses around here.  It’s one step away from being drinking water standard.

After going over the whole process, we went outside to walk around and see it all happening.

The first step took place in enclosed buildings to control the smell.  In this first step, the sewage is tunneled into the treatment plant and then goes through a bar screen type machine that takes out all the large trash that gets flushed down or runs into the drainage ditches - plastics, rags, leaves, limbs, trash, etc. 

The next step in the process is to put all the water into an outdoor tank.  The water bears and other microorganisms are in this tank and have a feast eating all the yucky biological matter they can find, ie. poop :)  Air is pumped into the tanks to help keep the microorganisms alive, just like in a fish tank.  As the water bears and company get full, they get heavy and sink to the bottom of the tank.  The result is fairly clear water on the top and sludgy looking stuff at the bottom...like silt.

The next step for the water is to go into a tank that has a very slow moving conveyor belt moving through it.  It scraps along gathering heavy stuff (full water bears, etc) that falls to the bottom and then skims along the top to get floating solidified oils.  The bars in the picture below are the conveyor belt scraping and skimming arms.  The yuck in the last two sections on the right is the floating it is collecting.

About this time my daughter came over to me and told me that she didn’t feel well.  It was over 108 yesterday and so was really hot outside.  I noticed that she was very pale and then she started just staring blankly and moaning.  Then she fainted.  Long story short, the ambulance was called and off we went to the hospital but, luckily, it all turned out fine.  Seems to have just been due to getting overheated.  Made for an exciting field trip :)

However, we did miss the rest of the tour.  So the rest of these pictures are from a friend.  Thanks, Annie!

Once the heavy stuff is removed from the outside water tanks, it is sent to this building and this machine where it is squeezed to remove all the water.  The result is what looks like a large chocolate cake but definitely doesn’t smell like cake.  This machine cuts the cake into what looks like brownies.

Then the brownies are loaded into a truck and driven to Arizona to their landfill.  Sorry, Arizona :) 

The water is sent to enclosed containers where a chlorine gas is added to disinfect it.  Once the water comes out the other end it is considered reclaimed water / potable water.  This water is piped out in bright purple pipes to golf courses to use for watering instead of the golf courses using our drinking water for watering.  Good deal!

Totally a cool tour!  We learned a lot!

Here’s link to a wastewater tour I took the kids on when they were a lot younger. They don’t remember much about that tour so I”m glad we did it again.  Our first tour was super stinky but this newest one basically had no smell at all.  Amazing!

Here’s a “human waste” related video.  Learn something new everyday :)