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Sewage-fed aquaculture: a sustainable approach for wastewater treatment and reuse

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Abstract

This study assesses the long-term sustainability for operation and maintenance (O&M) of sewage-fed aquaculture-based sewage treatment system. The study focused on the integrated assessment of an engineered pond system of 8 million liters per day capacity in the city of Karnal, the State of Haryana, northern India. Major areas during the assessment included health, environmental, societal and institutional views aspects as well as the quality of treated effluent subjected for reuse. The treatment facility met the Indian regulatory standards (downstream reuse and discharge into the legally permitted water bodies) in terms of physical–chemical parameters. The total coliform and faecal coliform removal were up to 2–3 log units; nevertheless, it was not capable to come across the bacterial count requirement (<1,000 per 100 mL to minimise human health risk in aquaculture practices). The system was able to generate sufficient net income required for routine O&M. Annual revenue collected by the Municipal Corporation from the lease of the facility as well as selling of treated wastewater was $3,077 and $16,667–$25,000, respectively. The additional benefit from the facility for the farmers included the saving of fertilizers and cheapest source of water available for irrigation. Recycling of treated sewages for irrigation is also returned nutrients to the surrounding farms in Karnal. This exercise has saved significant quantities of chemical fertilizer (26–41 Ton of nitrogen, 10–18 Ton of phosphorous and 38–58 Ton of potassium per year) and the overall benefit for farmers during cultivation of one acre of crop was calculated to be approximately $133 per year.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the co-funding of the project leading to these results by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Number 282911, and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), India for this work.

Ethical statement(s)

I am sending a manuscript entitled, “Sewage-Fed Aquaculture: A Sustainable Approach for Wastewater Treatment and Reuse” authored by Dinesh Kumar., Chaturvedi M. K. M., Sharma S. K. & Asolekar S. R. The submitted work has not been published before and approved by all co-authors. Authors will be merely responsible for any claims for compensation or unethical objects.

I hereby would like to enlighten the following ethical statements:

  1. 1.

    The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

  2. 2.

    This study was co-funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Number 282911, and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), India.

  3. 3.

    The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work.

  4. 4.

    A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).

  5. 5.

    No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions

  6. 6.

    No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works have been given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material.

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    Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

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    Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

  9. 9.

    The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

  10. 10.

    Experiment did not involve human and animals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Dinesh Kumar, Manoj K. M. Chaturvedi & Shyam R. Asolekar

  2. UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands

    Saroj Kumar Sharma

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  1. Dinesh Kumar
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  2. Manoj K. M. Chaturvedi
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  3. Saroj Kumar Sharma
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  4. Shyam R. Asolekar
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Correspondence to Dinesh Kumar.

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Kumar, D., Chaturvedi, M.K.M., Sharma, S.K. et al. Sewage-fed aquaculture: a sustainable approach for wastewater treatment and reuse. Environ Monit Assess 187, 656 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4883-x

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