| Current EPA regulations prohibit the direct discharge of agricultural wastewater, treated or otherwise, into public waterways. These regulations have forced animal producers to create zero-discharge wastewater systems employing land application. To remain viable, animal production enterprises must have functional and sustainable waste management systems (Hunt et al., 1995). There has been a great deal of interest in evaluating the use of constructed wetlands to improve wastewater quality and reduce wastewater quantity, minimizing the land required for disposal.;This research study was designed to establish and manage a constructed wetland treatment system and monitor the system performance in the treatment of dairy wastewater from an aerobic lagoon; and to develop a continuous flow measurement system, providing a more detailed account of the discharge of nutrients on a mass. Results throughout this study reveal a constructed wetland that was operating under low oxygen conditions. The inadequate pretreatment of the dairy wastewater by the first stage dairy lagoon caused the wetlands to be overloaded. The excessive loading rates experienced by the wetlands resulted in poor treatment performance throughout the entire study. All data indicates that the oxygen demand of accumulated oxygen demanding matter was simply too massive to overcome. Continuous flow measurement revealed that there was variability of flow, accounted for it, and consequently allowed a more detailed look at nutrient mass effluent. This study confirms that continuous flow measurement should be used to evaluate the use of constructed wetlands to improve wastewater quality and reduce wastewater quantity. |
