Designing, building and maintaining constructed wetlands for (waste) water treatment

www.mamase.orgAn UNESCO-IHE, ECOFYT, Wageningen University & Research [WUR] & World WildLlife Fund [WWF] cooperation.Educating technical managers of the lodges in and around the conservancies in the Mara river basin how to work on waste water treatment. Teaching the ins and outs of constructed wetlands, both in theory and in practice through actually building a small (but functioning) first wetland together.Intensive labour, learning and pleasure together for one week, and a certificate for the participants!

working on a novel approach for a wetland at a dairy farm...

Constructed Wetlands are just interesting material.And the area of water-related jobs is an interesting world.So it's really a pleasure to see new generations with an ear and eye for this topic.And that's how I came to give guest lectures, now and then ...

Growing roses for the European Market - in Africa - is a delicate thing. Both human development and environmental issues have to be meticulously dealt with. When I was invited by DLG, part of the Dutch ministery of Agriculture, Economical affairs and Innovation to investigate the possibilities of Constructed Wetlands for Sher in Ethiopia, I was absolutely intrigued. This location consists of 500(!) hectares of green houses, exclusively for roses. More than 14,000 people work here. In October 2012 DLG and ECOFYT went there, to realize four pilots (real scale; 130 m², 5,700 liters of waste water per day). This was done in a very warm cooperation with the local workers.This project will be closely monitored and if we are as successful as everybody hopes, this concept will be expanded to all greenhouses.

Uganda's capitol Kampala has a serious problem with waste water. A regular Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) is being built at the moment but it will take years to develop the sewer system so it can treat the waste water from a large part of the town. Until that time, waste water and storm water runs downhill to the Nakivubo channel which has basically turned into an open sewer. The channel used to end in a beautiful swamp of giant marsh plants floating on water, with a root system of sometimes 2 meters deep. This is no longer the case. The swamp is there, but it's in bad condition...The German development bank KfW was advised to see this as one of the most important issues to invest in. Before they do so, they want to have a thorough Feasibility Study (FS) on it. I was invited by the project leaders to give advice and to design a constructed wetland for this location, together with one of the directors of the Ugandan consultancy company AWE. Gathering all possible data, we decided that in this case, a Free Water Surface (FWS) System was the best option. While drawing and calculating we found out that we needed 61 ha (!) for it. The FS was finished in April 2016, as scheduled. The team consisted of: Ad Sannen (ID-AS Consult), Jan Spit (Jan Spit cs Delft), Frank van Dien (Ecofyt), Kalibbala Herbert Mpagi (AWE), Helen Mwase (WAM Inc.), Peter Vos (Ecorys) and Isabel Munandi (Runji & Partners)

www.primadomus.org

Iewan is a beautiful project for many reasons. Apart from the fact that it is really a marvelous design for a housing project (Michel Post, Orio ach.), one of the things I like best about it is that it's a bottom-up situation. Where normally a housing corporation decides and builts (being certain it will be rented anyway), here an enthusiast group of some 40 people put their heads together, defined HOW the wanted to live - and then went out to find a housing corporation that dared building what they wanted. Talis was so brave to pick up the challenge. And they found a building company that was so brave to start building it, together with the future tenants. The tenants, on their turn, understood that they had to give many guarantees to make this all happen.We were invited to design and build the constructed wetland for these 25 apartments. A lovely project! We enjoyed building it, we enjoyed the fine cooperation!

In Egypt some 100,000 ton of fish is produced for human consumption. But since this country knows all too well that water is a scarce commodity, all water is being reused as often as possible. The fish farmers are at the end of the line... How can we improve the water quality and thus the food quality? Meetings with the fish farming organization, together with the WUR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) may lead to a proper answer, involving constructed wetlands...The first visit with the local stakeholders was in July 2012.Building of the pilot wetlands was done in May 2013.Organized and in full cooperation with the Wageningen University & Research (WUR) CDI.Sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic affairs, Agriculture & Innovation (min-EL&I).

A beautiful new beach restaurant rizes from the dunes at Oostvoorne, overlooking a vast scenery, all the way to Maasvlakte 2. It's design is simply stunning and the ideas behind it are Cradle to Cradle, autonomy - or should we say Autarkie, self-sufficiency... Anyway: we were asked to design and help build a constructed wetland there which we did, together with a locally based contractor and Zonneveld BV as our supplier.

What really is special about this project is the fact that we are treating waste water on a roof. At the Watertoren of Bussum, we did that too, indeed, but this stretches it way further:The constructed wetland in this case is not planted with reed or other macrophytes - but with grass. That may sound ordinary but it's far from that. The roof has a typical LBC (Load Bearing Capacity) for a common green roof; 100 kg/m². Despite that, we managed to transform it into a waste water treatment facility. And we have named it "The Constructed Wetroof".There are hardly any comparable systems, throughout the world, it's a real novelty. Because the project is operational since the beginning of May 2012, we still are in the phase of monitoring and evaluating. This is done in cooperation with UNESCO-IHE & SHFT.What's furthermore special about this project was the way we (all the builders and the principal) were working together. The structure is called bouwteam+® (building team +) and we are really glad to have been part of it and learning about this new way of interaction. We even won a price for this exciting way of collaboration!The partners were: Van Helvoirt Groenprojecten, Aannemersbedrijf Roger Michels, Reytec Innovation Projects BV, GLC Houtconstructies bv, Klostermann Nederland BV, Van Delft Installatie BV and the architecture as well as the interior was done by Équipe voor Architectuur en Urbanisme.The building has won several architectural prices too, the fact that we were able to connect and integrate so many views and techniques, impressed many juries, obviously.

At the golf course Bentwoud (size more than 100 hectares) eventually a‭ ‬27-holes competition track will be realized, 3 x 9 holes.‭ The 18th hole opened on September 7th, 2011. The waste water on the premises is treated in a 4 cell constructed wetland of some 300 m² and the treated water will be added to the adjacent surface water. Preparations were done in collaboration with Verhoeve watertechniek and Bureau Antares while the construction was done together with contractor and golf course specialist AHA de Man BV. Working together has really been an enjoyable event.

De Bussumse WatertorenIn april 2010 werd het (tot dan toe) meest duurzame kantoorgebouw van Nederland opgeleverd: de watertoren in Bussum. Het project omvatte de renovatie van de oude watertoren uit 1897 en daaraan gekoppeld een nieuw kantoorgebouw van in totaal 3500 m2.Dit initiatief werd in 2004 genomen door Michiel Haas van het Nederlands Instituut voor Bouwbiologie en Ecologie (NIBE) en Bob Custers van VOCUS architecten bna - samen vormen zij het Bussums Watertoren Collectief. Met geloof in duurzaamheid, visie en daadkracht bewezen de initiatiefnemers dat, zelfs in economisch roerige tijden, het heel goed mogelijk is om een duurzaam bouwplan ten uitvoer te brengen.Het project heeft een MIG-score van 900 à 1000 punten.Op 1 juni zijn de Building Business Golden Green Awards 2010 uitgereikt. Deze jaarlijkse verkiezing wordt georganiseerd door Building Business en zet uitblinkende ontwikkelingen op het gebied van duurzaamheid in bouw en vastgoed in de schijnwerpers. De Bussumse Watertoren behoorde tot een van de 11 genomineerden in de categorie ‘Duurzame commercieel vastgoedontwikkelaar/bouwer van het jaar’ en won de 2e prijs.Maar de 1e prijs voor "Het duurzaamste kantoor van Nederland 2011" maakte natuurlijk dat de watertoren volop in het nieuws was.

With our team of four (small) companies and four students, we managed to obtain the second prize in the contest "Sustainable Living on Water". 74 teams, 53 to reach the finals, 11 to be nominated and then being on that stage... just wonderful!Search for BeauTark at www.eatmyhouse.nl and you can see what our design is about!