Wetland conference In Italy

the vice-president of the Ticino Park have said: "treatment wetland is the future".

43000 m3/d in 240Ha ... is this a treatment wetlands?

YES, is a treatment wetlands... wow!!! fantastic!!! 43000 cubic meter a day in 240 hectares.. is this the biggest treatment wetlands in the world?  As wrote in the article "REPORT FROM THE MIDDLE EAST REGION: LARGE-SCALE TREATMENT OF OILFIELD PRODUCED WATER USING WETLANDS IN OMAN" by Dr. Tom Headley and Dr. Roman Breuer published in IWA Specialist Group on Use of Macrophytes in Water Pollution Control: Newsletter No. 39, various full and pilot-scale treatment wetland projects have been realised in recent years for treatment of sewage and sludges in Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan. Wetlands are also playing an important role in treating industrial wastewaters on a large scale, such as the 600 ha wetland+pond system  that was designed and built for treating residual water from an oil field in Oman.
They recover oil, they save energy for water treatment with traditional systems, they create new environment in arid climate zone, they save below ground aquifer...

They also win the "2011 water global awards"

the vetiver network....a fantastic web site

The vetiver network is a really fantastic web environment.. you can find and ask everything you're searching about this plant species and his application for water treatment.

This is the link for Vetiver Systems for Waste Water Improvement and Other Related Water Quality Issues : http://www.vetiver.org/discus/messages/16/16.html and there are at least 30 discussion links related to vetiver and water purification such us for example.
- Effluent pond treatment using vetiver grass:  http://www.vetiver.org/discus/messages/16/778.html?1255777325
- Basic household system: http://www.vetiver.org/discus/messages/16/1057.html?1211996863
-Vetiver for Sewage treatment in Australi:a http://www.vetiver.org/discus/messages/16/492.html?1141668160

... and many others!!!


thanks vetiver!!!

a thought arise from an article of National Geographic:

In the last NG magazine of June there is an interesting article about solar storms written by Timothy Ferris:

Sun Struck - The space-weather forecast for the next few years: solar storms, with a chance of catastrophic blackouts on Earth. Are we prepared?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/solar-storms/nasa-photography

<A Carrington-class storm could fry more transformers than the power companies keep stockpiled, leaving millions without light, potable water, sewage treatment, heating, air-conditioning, fuel, telephone service, or perishable food and medications during the months it would take to manufacture and install new transformers. A recent National Academy of Sciences report estimates that such a storm could wreak the economic disruption of 20 Katrina-class hurricanes, costing one to two trillion dollars in the first year alone and taking a decade to recover from.

“We cannot predict what the sun will do more than a few days ahead of time,” laments Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. 
(full text and video at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/solar-storms/ferris-text).>>


In the underliner text you can read that everything that works with energy input may have problems.. also traditional sewage treatment!!!
Well, usually treatment wetlands do not have problems because the energy input is very limited!!! an horizontal flow bed doesn't require energy or pumps for his functioning... a vertical bed could be feeded with a mechanical syphoon!!!