Study on the Wastewater Reuse for Agricultural Water in Korea

Abstract

The objectives of the paper are to develop the basic technologies for reclaiming the effluents from wastewatertreatment plants and reusing for irrigated rice paddies and to evaluate the effects of the wastewater reuse as irrigation waterto paddy rice culture on yield components and yields. The Suwon wastewater treatment plant has been selected forwastewater reuse site. The randomized complete block design was applied to wastewater application to paddy rice withfive treatments, six replications. A control treatment (TR#1) was the plots with groundwater irrigation, the other treatment(TR#2) with polluted stream water irrigation, and three others (TR#3, TR#4, TR#5) with reclaimed wastewaterirrigation. Three levels of wastewater treatments included the effluent from the plant (TR#3), effluent after sand filtering(TR#4), and effluent after sand filtering and ultra-violet treatment (TR#5). The effects of various wastewater treatmentlevels on water quality, paddy soil, crop growth, yields, and the health hazards were investigated. The primary resultsindicate that cultivating rice with reclaimed wastewater irrigation did not cause a problem to adverse effects on crop growthand yields. The test plots were monitored for clum length (CL), panicle length (PL), yield component, and yields (YD) afterharvesting rice crop. They were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA), and means were separated by calculatingthe least significant difference (LSD). ANOVA tests showed that CL, thousand grain weight (TW), and YD for treatmentswere statistically significant at the 5% level. According to Duncun's multiple range test, there were significant at the 5%and 1% level between TR#1 and another plots. Overall, irrigation of reclaimed wastewater did not cause significant adverse effects, however, long-term monitoring is recommended on the effects on soil characteristics and its related healthconcerns.