Wastewater treatment from a child’s viewpoint
From Lili, aged 8
Today we went to the sewer works. It didn’t smell very nice, we had to ware glasses, gloves and a hat and a fluo.. jacket. It was a bit interesting because I wanted to know what hapens and where does my poo go when I flush the toillet.
The machines and tanks filter they seperate the poo from the water there is a place where the storm water goes and they try to send it back as quickly as possible. There is another place where there are some pebbles that are soaked with the water and that has been filtered multiple times. But it still isn’t clean enough and so there some bacteria that eat the poo and the solids. The water that has been poured over the pebbles goes deep under the pebbles and gets filtered.
From Leo, aged 13
The sewerage goes all the way to the water treatment industry where they clean the water step by step:
- first by machines that take all the solids out
- then through big basins which goes to other machines that take the smaller solides out. The they put the solides onleey and put the biological solides in the compost. With the rest of the water they clean it through deep holes which contains loads of stones, it is a very biological way to treat the water and by that stage the water is already very clean. After they go through machine that basically digest it and finaly the water is reliest into the river again
From Max, aged 16
My impressions from the sewage treatment plant were very positive. The people who worked there had nothing to hide and they seemed to be taking their jobs very seriously. I was surprised by the good state of the infrastructure because I’d never been at a sewage treatment plant so I thought everything was going to be delapidated just like in the movies. The water that flows back into the river was surprisingly clean and I was impressed. One of the people who guided us was called Gary and he was very enthusiastic. He told me all sorts of interesting information like the facts that the plant is sixty years old and it’s capacity is of a hundred and fifty thousand people. Which I found very smart Gary also explained along with Tony how the bug system works. One thing that did bother me was the smell it was revolting. What was I going to expect? It’s a sewage treatment plant it’s obviously not going to smell nice.
I think the media over exaggerate when it comes to sewage treatment problems. From what I saw our sewage treatment is in good hands and the people who criticize it should go and see for themselves.
I would have been interested to see what sort of toys end up in the sewage.
Note from their Granny
These three children attend the French Lycée in Brussels. They are tri-lingual in French, English and Italian. Their writing above has not been corrected or adjusted.
