Marine outfall

A marine outfall is a pipeline or tunnel that discharges municipal or industrial wastewater, stormwater, combined sewer overflows, cooling water, or brine effluents from water desalination plants to the sea. Usually they discharge under the sea's surface (submarine outfall). In the case of municipal wastewater, effluent is often being discharged after having undergone no or only primary treatment, with the intention of using the assimilative capacity of the sea for further treatment. Submarine outfalls are common throughout the world and probably number in the thousands. More than 200 outfalls alone have been listed in a single international database maintained by the Institute for Hydromechanics at Karlsruhe University for the International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR) / International Water Association (IWA) Committee on Marine Outfall Systems.^[1]

In Latin America and the Caribbean there were 134 outfalls with more than 500 m length in 2006 for wastewater disposal alone, according to a survey by the Panamerican Center for Environmental Engineering (CEPIS) of PAHO. According to the survey, the largest number of municipal wastewater outfalls in the region exist in Venezuela (39), Chile (39) and Brazil (22).^[2]

Advantages

According to the Australian engineer Sharon Beder the main advantages of marine outfalls for the discharge of wastewater are:

• the natural dilution and dispersion of organic matter, pathogens and other pollutants
• the ability to keep the sewage field submerged because of the depth at which the sewage is being released
• the greater die-off rate of pathogens due to the greater distance they will have to travel to shore.^[3]

They also tend to be less expensive than advanced wastewater treatment plants, using the natural assimilative capacity of the sea instead of energy-intensive treatment processes in a plant. For example, preliminary treatment of wastewater is sufficient with an effective outfall and diffuser. The costs of preliminary treatment are about one tenth that of secondary treatment.^[4] Preliminary treatment also requires much less land than advanced wastewater treatment.

Disadvantages

Marine outfalls for partially treated or untreated wastewater remain controversial. Still according to Sharon Beder, the design calculation and computer models for pollution modeling have been criticized, arguing that dilution has been overemphasized and that other mechanisms work in the opposite direction, such as bioaccumulation of toxins, sedimentation of sludge particles and agglomeration of sewage particles with grease. Accumulative mechanisms include slick formation, windrow formation, flocculate formation and agglomerated formation. Grease or wax can interfere with dispersion, so that bacteria and viruses could be carried to remote locations where the concentration of bacterial predators would be low and the die-off rate much lower.^[3]

Technology

Outfalls vary in diameter from as narrow as 15 cm to as wide as 8 meters; the widest registered outfall in the world with 8 m diameter is located in Navia (Spain) for the discharge of industrial wastewater. Outfalls vary in length from 50 meters to 55 km, the longest registered outfalls being the Boston outfall with a length of 16 km and an industrial outfall in Ankleshwar (India) with a length of 55 km. The depth of the deepest point of an outfall varies from 3 m to up to 60 m, the deepest registered outfall being located in Macuto, Vargas (Venezuela) for the discharge of untreated municipal wastewater.

Outfall materials include polyethylene, stainless steel, carbon steel, glass-reinforced plastic, reinforced concrete, cast iron or tunnels through rock. Common installation methods for pipelines are float and sink, bottom pull and top pull.^[1]

Examples

Submarine outfalls exist, existed or have been considered - among many others - in the following locations:

Africa

• Casablanca (Morocco).

Asia

• Manila Bay (Philippines).
• Mumbai (India).

Australia

• Sydney.

Europe

• Barcelona, Spain
• Costa do Estoril (Portugal),
• the Marmara Sea near Istanbul (Turkey),
• San Sebastián (Spain),
• Split (Croatia),
• the Thames Estuary downstream of London (UK), and
• Edinburgh, Scotland.

North America

• Honolulu (USA),
• the New York Bight (USA),
• the Southern California Bight (USA), ^[5] and
• Victoria, British Columbia, (Canada).^[6]

Latin America and the Caribbean

• Cartagena, Colombia,
• Ipanema beach from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). This outfall, built in 1975, discharges untreated wastewater through a pipe with a diameter of 2.4m and a length of 4,775m at a depth of 27m.^[1]
• Sosua (Dominican Republic).

Controversies

In the 1960s the city of Sydney decided to build ocean sewage outfalls to discharge partially treated sewage 2-4 km offshore at a cost of US$ 300 million. In the late 1980s, however, the government promised to upgrade the coastal treatment plants so that sewage would be treated to at least secondary treatment standards before discharge into the ocean.^[7]

The submarine outfall in Cartagena, Colombia was financed with a loan by the World Bank. It was subsequently challenged by residents claiming that the wastewater caused damage to the marine environment and to fisheries. The case was taken up by the World Bank's Inspection Panel, which contracted two independent three-dimensional modeling efforts in 2006. Both "confirmed that the 2.85km long submarine outfall (was) adequate."^[8]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Outfalls Database Click on "Activities", then "Outfalls repository", then "database", then "Output"
2. ^ Outfalls Database, then click on "Links and Publications" and on "Sewage disposal of coastal cities submarine outfalls" under the heading "Decisionmaking"
3. ^ ^{a b} Beder, Sharon: From Pipe Dreams to Tunnel Vision: Engineering Decision-Making and Sydney's Sewerage System, Ph.D. Thesis, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA 1989, Chapter 8: The 'Science' and 'Metaphysics' of Submarine Outfalls
4. ^ Philip JW Roberts:"Underwater and underused: The case of marine outfalls in wastewater disposal", in Water21, Magazine of the International Water Association, October 2010, pp. 22-26
5. ^ Gunnerson, C.G., "Wastewater Management for Coastal Cities: The Ocean Disposal Option", World Bank Technical Paper Number 77, February 1988.
6. ^ Rogers V.J.: Wastewater treatment utilizing submarine outfalls: the role of science, communications and public involvement in the decision-making process, Water Science and Technology, Volume 32, Number 2, 1995 , pp. 1-8(8)
7. ^ Sharon Beder, 'Getting into Deep Water: Sydney's Extended Ocean Sewage Outfalls' in Pam Scott, ed., A Herd of White Elephants: Australia's Science & Technology Policy, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1992, pp62-74.
8. ^ World Bank Inspection Panel Progress Report on Cartagena Water Supply, Sewerage and Environmental Management Project

Sources

• Beder, Sharon: From Pipe Dreams to Tunnel Vision: Engineering Decision-Making and Sydney's Sewerage System, Ph.D. Thesis, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA 1989, Chapter 8: The 'Science' and 'Metaphysics' of Submarine Outfalls
• Gunnerson, C.G., "Wastewater Management for Coastal Cities: The Ocean Disposal Option", World Bank Technical Paper Number 77, February 1988.
• IWA Committee on Marine Outfall Systems
• Rogers V.J.: Wastewater treatment utilizing submarine outfalls: the role of science, communications and public involvement in the decision-making process, Water Science and Technology, Volume 32, Number 2, 1995 , pp. 1-8(8)
• Salas, Henry J.:Submarine outfalls a viable alternative for sewage discharge of coastal cities in Latin America and the Caribbean, Lima; CEPIS, 2000

External links

• IAHR/IWA Committee on Marine Outfall Systems