Built by Ecological Technologies in 2010, this greenhouse is a joint project of the Government of Canada and the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB). It operates as a water reclamation and sewage treatment facility, owned and operated by the RDKB. An ancillary by-product and benefit of the operation of the greenhouse is the growing of landscaping plants for the regional district.
A detailed description of the facility follows.
Christina Lake Solar Aquatic System
The RDKB owns and operates the Christina Lake Solar Aquatic System, a tertiary waste water system that in time, should become an economically, self-sustaining facility over-time. The wastewater treatment technology for this system processes raw sewage effluent to advanced tertiary treatment levels for unrestricted reuse.
The system, which was built in 2010, includes a process design with full quality assurance and quality control components and operational strategies. Residuals in the form of sludge and plant biomass are processed at the treatment facility, using worm (vermiculture) composting to produce a safe, usable soil amendment. The CLAC SAS is capable of treating 22.5 m3/day but is expandable as other developments occur (such as a connection to RV dump station, future local residential/commercial developments, etc.). At the present time, the wastewater effluent quality meets or surpasses all standards established by BC Ministry of Environment and the Interior Health Authority.
The Solar Aquatics technology duplicates, under controlled conditions, the natural water purification processes of streams and wetlands. Housed within a greenhouse to optimize conditions for biological activity, wastewater is circulated through ecologically engineered aquatic environments where the contaminants and nutrients are metabolized or incorporated into living plant tissue. The process combines ecological engineering principles with standard wastewater treatment concepts. By combining the biological components that work in natural water purification processes with proven wastewater treatment components, the Solar Aquatics process provides an enhancement on natural and conventional treatment processes.
The Solar Aquatics process uses fixed film substrate in the forms of plant roots and Aerobic Tank surfaces to provide habitat for microbes. The process also uses suspended growth biomass within the wastewater moving through the system. Activated sludge (hungry microbes from the end of the aerobic portion of the process) is recycled to the blending tank for reseeding high levels of these beneficial bacteria into the raw wastewater entering the system. By optimizing the conditions in the greenhouse, ecosystems that develop provide a higher degree of biodiversity (i.e. a wide range of plants and animal species) than other biological treatment technologies, thereby treating a wider range of contaminants and making this system more stable and resilient to shock loadings of contaminants.
From the RDKB
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