The Cost Impact of Joint Treatment of Domestic and Poultry Processing Wastewaters

Abstract

A growing population has placed increasingly competitive demands on the nation's common property resources, such as air and water. During the past decade there has been increasing concern that a misallocation of resources may have occurred. As a result, a new national awareness has developed concerning the management of common property resources, as expressed in two major pieces of federal legislation: The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (P.L. 92-500) and the Clean Water Act of 1977 (P.L. 95217). These laws establish national goals for eliminating the practice of discharging pollutants into the navigable waters of the United States, and provide for the development of specific guidelines for effluent discharge from all point sources-public and private. In addition, they provide for financial assistance, in the form of construction subsidies, to communities attempting to meet these guidelines. In response to the requirements established in these laws, individual communities and industries find that they must reexamine their procedures for wastewater disposal. Many communities have or will have to design new or expanded wastewater treatment facilities. Small rural communities and industrial firms, though, often lack sufficient volumes to capture the significant economies of size associated with wastewater treatment processes (Young 1976). One alternative for these communities and firms is to jointly treat their wastes in a common, publicly owned facility. Since industrial contributions can significantly alter the concentration of various wastewater constituents and the flow to be