Infrastructure Models for Ecological Wastewater Management - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 399

20 InfrastructureModelsfor

EcologicalWastewater
Management

Scott Wallace

CONTENTS
Introduction............................................................................................................ 413
Creating Successful Wastewater Infrastructure...................................................... 414
The Effect of Scale in Wastewater Infrastructure .................................................. 414
Single-Home Infrastructure ................................................................................... 417
Single-Home Wastewater Management Options............................................... 417
Conventional Technologies ............................................................................... 418
Development of New Ecotechnology................................................................ 419
Water as a Carrier Medium ............................................................................... 419
Village-Scale (Cluster System) Infrastructure ....................................................... 420
Alternative Collection Systems ......................................................................... 420
Cluster Treatment Systems .................................................................................... 422
Moving Forward in Iraq ......................................................................................... 424
References.............................................................................................................. 424

INTRODUCTION
This chapter summarizes the planning and management challenges of maintaining
a successful wastewater infrastructure. Every culture places its own set of religious,
technical, and economic constraints on the development of societal infrastructure.
Within Islamic law, for example, there is sufficient foundation through fatwa to sup-
port water reuse (Abderrahman 2001), as discussed in chapter 18.
There are ecotechnologies available today that are capable of treating sewage to
targeted reuse standards. Ponds (Mara 1976) and various forms of constructed wet-
lands (Kadlec and Knight 1996) are leading candidates of ecotechnology selection,
as discussed in chapters 17 and 18. However, the choice of technology is not nearly
as important as the cultural fit of the technology. Successful wastewater projects
incorporate technologies that are culturally acceptable and that can be designed,
constructed, operated, and maintained within the local economy.
The world population has increased from approximately 2.5 billion people in
1950 to 6.3 billion people in 2003 (United Nations 2003). Approximately 81 percent

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