Study On Constructed Wetlands For Wastewater Treatment In Mountain Resorts

Water is the most active element of constructing scenery in mountain resorts. It is also the basic factor of keeping ecologic balance of mountain resorts and providing enough water for tourism facilities in tourism destinations. But its importance accompanies its fragility. The water body is the most fragile of all the eco-environmental factors of mountain resorts. Because of taking a "pollution first, abatement later" road during the tourism development, mountain resorts have witnessed prevailing water pollution that destructs landscape and environment and accordingly restricts the sustainable development of tourism.The native water is of good quality in mountain resorts, which is needed by tourism. There are fewer receiving waters and accordingly immediate pollution effect. In mountain resorts, wastewater discharge is fluctuating and not concentrative, which complicates the wastewater treatment. When applied to mountain resorts, the current technologies and facilities for wastewater treatment all have some limits such as high construction investment, high operation cost, complicated maintenance and management, low treatment efficiency, which restrict their application and accordingly cause low treatment rate. It is necessary to search for a new method that is economically and technically feasible and efficient. Constructed wetlands for treating urban wastewater have many advantages such as high removal rate of N and P, tolerance to wastewater flow fluctuation, free size of wetland beds, low investment, low operation costs, easy maintenance, which are very suitable in mountain resorts and also superior to the traditional technologies. The disadvantages such as lower treatment efficiency in winter and saturation of pollutants don't bring much unfavorable effect because of fewer visitors in winter. Mountain resorts sometimes cannot offer enough areas for treating wetlands because of topographic constraint, but the price of land is very low. The high efficiency is verified by two examples of running constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment in mountain resorts. So constructed wetlands are regarded as the top choice for treating wastewater in mountain resorts.Based on detailed on-the-pot investigation, the paper takes Daxiongsha National Forest Park as a case. It is a mountain resort of regional market, which is located in a backward mountain county. So it is unrealistic to build centralized wastewater treatment plants and use terrainburying treatment facilities widely. By contrasting with the successful constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment in mountain resorts in the world in natural conditions, wastewater discharge, wastewater quality, the feasibility of constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment in Daxiongshan is verified. Finally, designs constructed wetlands for three different kinds of tourism facilities: for Xingyue villa short of water, constructs horizontal flow wetlands to treat black water and grey water separately;for dispersed Nongjiale inns, combine biogas digesters with ecological agriculture for both wastewater treatment and waste reuse;for Jingxinzhai Hotel with rich water, many beds, connects horizontal flow wetland beds with a wetland pond according to the actual terrain.