The owner of a bed and breakfast in northern Canada, Jens Steenberg, is using a recycling device that could transform water use in the Arctic. He has not emptied the sewage tank servicing his business for 18 months, thanks to what he calls a biofilter. This is a two metre wide cylindrical tank and a covered vat, plus a tangle of pipes, tubes and gauges.
The device works like an in-house septic tank, using naturally occurring bacteria to strain the solids out of wastewater. Water left behind is filtered further, disinfected with ozone, and then piped back into the plumbing, where it is used for washing clothes and flushing toilets.
Government permission to use the recycled water for showering is still pending. "It is pure, you could even drink it, but we are not allowed," Mr. Steenberg said.
The recycling equipment is installed in his bed and breakfast business, Accommodations by the Sea, an airy, six bedroom house built high on the bluffs overlooking Koojesse Inlet, in Iqaluit, capital of Canada's newest territory Nunavut. The biofilter process is organic and chemical free. Samples are sent every 10 days to a government laboratory in Ottawa, where the water is tested for impurities. So far its record has been spotless. He says: "It's actually turning out better than the Town water."
The biofilter was devised by Ontario-based Creative Communities Research. It cost about $30,000 to purchase and install, and has been operating since the bed and breakfast opened in April 1999. It has cut water use by about 60 percent, in addition to almost eliminating the need for sewage pickup.
In the Arctic, where the price of water and sewer service is exorbitant, those kind of savings soon add up. The average cost of providing water service in Iqaluit is about 2.5 cents per litre. (Many urban Ontario communities pay less than one cent per thousand litres). In outlying communities, where water costs are nearly five cents per litre, recycling water would save substantial sums of money.
Mr. Steenberg and the president of Creative Communities Research, Rolf Paloheimo, are pitching a plan to the Town of Iqaluit to try out the recycling system on a larger scale, which could save the Town a couple of million dollars a year. In a draft proposal submitted to the Town this summer, homes in the Apex area of Iqaluit would be linked to a central biofiltration system. The wastewater from the homes' toilets would be pumped to the filter, purified, and then sent back to the houses. "We could have three or four systems like that in Apex and that would take care of all the houses," Steenberg said.
Creative Communities Research would likely pay to build the system and allow the Town to buy it back over time. The company believes the system could pay for itself in three to five years.
Matthew Hough, Iqaluit's director of public works, said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the prospect of large scale water recycling in Iqaluit.
A preview will be available soon in another Arctic community, Cape Dorset, where another biofilter designed by Creative Communities Research is scheduled to begin operating. Seventeen homes are to be served by five separate biofilters. Mike Richards, the head of that community's housing association, said the hamlet is optimistic about the $80,000 project. He expects the technology to spread throughout the community if the cost savings end up being significant. He said: "They're pretty diligent about trying to save money here. If we can cut down our water delivery by a third or a half, that's pretty substantial."
The biofilter was designed as part of an integrated system known as the Healthy House System. "The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation ran a Healthy House competition in the 1990s. The specification was that the house needed no municipal services," said Mr. Paloheimo. "Our system won it."
The biofilter is still at the pre-commercialization stage, but interest is growing across Canada and particularly in China. Systems have been installed in Toronto, North Vancouver, another project in Yellowknife, as well as Iqaluit and Cape Dorset.
Source: Nunatsiaq News online.
See our home page on how to order your subscription. We regret we can only accept orders from Canada and the United States.