Wetland Gardens for Waste Water Management

Wetland Gardens for Waste Water Management

The current state of sanitation in Monwabisi Park is less than acceptable for healthy living (Envisioning Endlovini, 2008). Many residents use pit latrines and many of the toilets that do exist leak into the streets. There is also no formal system for drainage or wastewater disposal. Gardens can provide a pro-permaculture approach for wastewater disposal. The plants in the garden act as an aerating filter for wastewater while also using the nutrients from water to grow into useable resources for the community.

An ecological, cost-effective system that uses gardens as a system of wastewater management is a wetland garden attached to a small leach-field (Czech, 2002). This method of wastewater treatment gardening is relatively cheap to maintain and only requires 1.3 m² per person. If a system of community toilets were created in Monwabisi Park, the idea would be easy to implement because of its minimal spatial requirements. The majority of the system would be placed underground, only needing ground space for a wetland cell and a small leach field that can be used as space for a community garden.

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The wetland wastewater treatment system consists of three different treatment phases that feed into a wetland cell and a soil garden. The first treatment phase requires the placement of an underground septic tank for wastewater dumping. This tank would feed through a bed of gravel to the second phase, where the roots of wetland plants would absorb the nutrient-rich water. These plants would then pump air through their roots and into the wastewater, a very important step in the filtration process. Many plants could be used in this cell,. including types of tea plants or other food plants that require cooking before being eaten. The third and final stage uses a pump to take the filtered water from the wetland cell and deposit it into a leach field. This leach field would be an ideal place for a sustainable community garden because the soil would constantly be pumped with nutrients from the filtered water. This water would be sanitary enough to safely grow food products within the garden, which would promote a system of sustainable agriculture.

The wetland wastewater treatment system requires cheap, basic materials and does not require a professional for installation (Ayaz, 2001). The greatest cost would be in creating the septic tank, which would require an impermeable surface to contain the sewage. After that, it requires simple piping, gravel, and a pumping system. The system does require a specific amount of communal space, however, which does not yet exist in the area. Thus, it would have to be implemented as a part of the master redevelopment plan.

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