An apartment with 300+ homes, near a lake and adjacent to a large highway faces a constant basement seepage problem. They also have the problem of excess treated waste water and not having sufficient avenues to utilise it. Some creative and co-operative thinking results in this lemons to lemonade solution
1. An existing open well in the basement serves as the receptacle for seepage from the lake, surface rainfall runoff and excess STP treated water, thereby protecting the basement
2. A smart company sets up a water treatment plant to pick this mixed water up and treat it to potable water quality standards. The water is then sold to a nearby laundry
3. The water treatment company pays the apartment a monthly rental for the space and also pays the energy bills
4. The treated water is sent to the laundry in those very tankers that used to supply borewell water to the laundry
5. The laundry benefits from the soft water (as opposed to the hard water that they got from borewells) that drastically reduces the need for detergent as well as reduces the complexity and resource requirement for the treating the used water in the ETP
6. While there are ways in which each of these systems can be bettered, it demonstrates a smart and creative way for a city to manage its waste water. Everybody benefits
a) The apartment benefits by not having to deal (with the activities and financial expenditures) with seepage, excess waste water + actualy makes some money of renting the space
b) The water treatment company has a space to run its plant and also benefits from selling the water
c) While the tanker operators perceive this operation as a threat to their business, they get to retain their role/finances of transporting the water
d) The laundry benefits by having access to soft water which reduces its costs of operations
e) The city and its environs benefit too
Many things to learn and tweak along the way. But certainly a case study worth speaking about
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| The well that receives seepage from the lake, rainfall runoff, excess STP treated water and even the reject and backwash from the treatment process |