Sewage treatment plant

[Bogart]

There must be some of you on here who have treatment plants as opposed to just the good old septic tank hence asking for thoughts. I know one is not suppsed to put down it things such as sanitary items etc just paper but it is more the chemicals I am concerned with. We keep thinks like fats to a minimum etc but it is when it comes to detergents I am uncertain.
As our treatment plant disposes of the water content into a neigbours watercourse, which passes through her pond, all approved by the Environment Agency, we are concerned to put the least harmful stuff into the system. In her pond she has foundhigh levels of phosphate which I am making the assumption on has come from things such as washing machine powder and the water softener. The water softener has been removed and we use an "eco friendly" machine powder. Now after all that waffle is there anything else we should be concentrating on to
minimise effects.
Regards

 

[LadyArowana]

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but your mention of fats and oils reminded me that in one place we had a 'grease trap' under the sink, stopped all that junk foing down the drain ( supposedly )

 

[Flyfisher]

Interesting question. Are there any signs that the pond life is suffering for any reason?

A few neighbour's have the sort of 'treatment tanks' I think you're referring to and they feed into our fairly large pond from which there is an outfall into a river. All of our surface water (and some other neighbour's) also feeds into the same pond, although our foul drainage is into an old septic tank.

The pond itself seems just as healthy as our other pond that have no such feeds into them, with weed, lily pads, frogs and some fish, so although I've no real idea what is going into it there seems to be nothing particularly harmful.

I understand that agricultural fertiliser run off into rivers can raise levels of some substances, but I believe the Environment Agency monitors such things. I don't know if they'd investigate a private pond though they may be interested in looking at a watercourse, depending where it flows. Having said that, if the pond looks healthy enough I personally would leave it be rather than invite the authorities to have a look.

 

[MikeG]

Yikes! I would never have a sewerage treatment plant discharge directly to a garden pond. If there is some distance between the plant and the pond, how about installing a reed bed? That would sort any water quality issues out nicely.

 

[Flyfisher]

I think it depends on the size of the pond. Ours is about 1/3rd acre.