Visit to Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant
On Thursday 21st February 2013, Green School Committee members made a trip to Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant.
CRC students visiting the Ringsend plant
We found out a lot of interesting information about this plant. It is ten years old and was set up following an EU Wastewater Treatment directive in 1999. This directive stated that it was no longer acceptable for EU countries to dump sludge directly into the Marine Environment. Previous to 1999 big tankers dumped Wastewater in Dublin out to sea three times a week! The Water Treatment Plant that was in existence at that time was only a Primary Treatment Plant. It only took 50% of solid waste from water. The rest of the waste was going back into Dublin Bay. Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant is a tertiary Water Treatment Plant. Now instead of sludge a Class A Material called Biofert is created. Biofert is used as a fertilizer on land. It is cheaper than fertilizer and gets better results. Methane Gas is also a byproduct of the water treatment process. This gas is being reused to power the Water Treatment Plant.
We were very interested to hear that Dollymount Strand near our school is the first point of impact for discharge from the Wastewater Treatment Plant. Dollymount Strand has blue flag status. This tells us that the quality of the effluent coming from the Wastewater Treatment Plant is very good. Because of the success of this Wastewater Treatment Plant Dublin citizens can partake of all kinds of water sports in the Dublin Bay area as the picture below shows:
