Where does our water go?

Answer 1

ANSWER

it goes to a recycling place were it is processed and then put into landfill

ANSWER (more detail requested)

Where your wastewater goes depends upon where you live. If you are in a rural area, you have a wastewater treatment plant in you yard.

(1) All wastewater drains into a septic tank, where solid material settles to the bottom.

(2) The effluent (with solids removed) goes into a drywell or drainfield where it soaks into the soil and is filtered by the soil until it makes its way into the groundwater. By time it gets to the groundwater, it is clean eough to drink because micro-organisms in the soil have removed pollutants.

If you live in a suburb or city, there is too much wastewater to be treated in each person's yard or neighborhood, so we build wastewater treatment plants to accomplish the same thing. Entire books have been written about wastewater treatment plants, so we'll just outline the basic steps here:

(1) Remove trash and debris

(2) Primary treatment - the wastewater is allowed to stand, so that solid waste will sink to form a sludge and oils will float so they can be skimmed off the top; the liquid that remains is effluent.

(3) Secondary treatment - bacteria and other organisms are used to detoxify the effluent; the organisms are then allowed to settle to the bottom.

(4) Filtration - the treated effluent is allowed to trickle slowly through beds of sand or activated charcoal, or is directed into specially engineered confined wetlands where plants, organisms and soil purify the effluent.

(5) Disinfection - The most common treatment is to use a halogen such as chlorine, bromine or iodine to kill micro-organisms before the water is released to a river, lake, ocean, etc. Ozone is now being used in some facilities, and ultraviolet (UV) energy has proven successful.

(6) Byproduct disposal - all of the sludge, oils, toxins, etc, that have been removed from the water need to be treated and safely disposed of. If you have a backyard septic tank, you need to have a specialist come every few years and pump the sludge out of the bottom of your tank. It is spread on farm fields, which can then be used for growing crops a couple years later after exposure to the elements has detoxified it.r