Just down the hill from most of the buildings at Mc Murdo is
building 199, the Water Treatment facility where there are 3 employees working
hard to take care of business… our business.
The cast of characters: myself, Levi, Julie, and Jason.
We met Rick, one of three waste employees, at one of the
bars the night before and arranged a tour of the facility to see what exactly
happens after you flush here.
We arrived at 3pm sharp, greeted by Rick and our tour
started with an overview presented via a poster created to help one understand
the process. We then gloved up and started at the beginning, the Muffin Monster
Masticator.
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| Muffin Monster Masticator #1 and #2 |
Now, you might be thinking I am making this up but it is the
trademarked name! And technically speaking we actually have two. This is
used
to break up any solids. Officially this is all we have to have according
to the
Antarctic Treaty, but we have much more! Next is the flow meter which
measure
the volume of incoming waste which leads to the aeration tanks which
separates the clarified water from the solids which go to the digester.
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| Aeration Tanks |
From there the solids go through the belt filter
press which mixes some goo in to help bind things and it gets placed in a
box to be sent back to the USA.
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| Belt Filter Press |
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| A "cake" all boxed up ready to be sent to the USA |
The clarified water goes through a set
of UV lights and then through another flow meter and out into McMurdo
Sound.
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| UV lights at work |
Rick showed us around to all of this and
then took us to the lab where we looked at some samples from the
process to make sure everything is working right. Seeing the worms,
which are normal in the samples, was enough to make me squirm.
The whole tour was very interesting and I'm glad to know that everything is taken care of.
More pictures available at...
1 comment:
Holy crap. That is amazing. But then really no different from what happens in many cities in America. Milwaukee sells Milorganite fertilizer made from their city sewer solids. But it is good to see that the Americans who run McMurdo are doing more than what is required to help protect the pristine environment of Antarctica. Thanks for the tour!
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