Annabelle Fritz, “Decentralized Wastewater Treatment: A New Look at the Aging Wastewater Treatment System”
Mentor: James Wasley, Architecture

This research intends to analyze decentralized wastewater treatment examples to develop a typology for choosing and designing on-site wastewater treatment systems and will focus on the scales of different treatment technologies to assist designers and engineers in determining which type of system will be work best for their project. Decentralized treatment is an alternative to centralized treatment such as municipal and city-wide systems which are often at their capacity for the amount of wastewater they can treat, or they do not meet current standards for releasing reclaimed water back into the environment. On-site wastewater is confined to a community of people and is much more manageable. They are much smaller allowing for more maintainable preservation and cost less than traditional systems when comparing a single community system to an entire city’s system. On-site systems are often found to be much more environmentally friendly and sustainable because they are a smaller scale, which is the more important focus of our research. The methodology consists of compiling case studies of existing and successful examples of on-site wastewater treatment systems. We will be constructing a typology for on-site wastewater treatment systems. Using the anticipated typology of systems, we hope to design an appropriate and effective system for a residential redevelopment of the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisconsin. I will be helping develop and design a wastewater treatment system that will service this development. By compiling these case studies, we can see that on-site wastewater treatment is feasible and can be very beneficial for the environment. They offer a great alternative to conventional wastewater treatment systems by their longevity and environmental benefits. We hope that by creating this typology, the idea of choosing on-site wastewater treatment will be less daunting with much of the pertinent information in one place.