Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Seminatural Wetlands and Activated Sludge Wastewater-Treatment Systems

A cost-effectiveness analysis was performed to evaluate the competitiveness of seminatural Free Water Surface (FWS) wetlands compared to traditional wastewater-treatment plants. Six scenarios of the service costs of three FWS wetlands and three different wastewater-treatment plants based on active s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental management (New York) 2008, Vol.41 (1), p.118-129
Main Authors: Mannino, Ilda, Franco, Daniel, Piccioni, Enrico, Favero, Laura, Mattiuzzo, Erika, Zanetto, Gabriele
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic Pollution
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Chemical oxygen demand
Cost analysis
cost effectiveness
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Earth and Environmental Science
Ecology
Ecosystems
Environment
Environmental economics
Environmental Management
Forestry Management
Free water surface wetlands
Italy
Models, Theoretical
Nature Conservation
Pollutants
Service cost
Sewage
Sludge
Surface water
Vegetation
Waste Disposal, Fluid - economics
Waste Disposal, Fluid - methods
Waste Water Technology
wastewater treatment
Water Management
Water Pollution - prevention & control
Water Pollution Control
Water Purification - economics
Water Purification - methods
Water treatment
Wetlands
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A cost-effectiveness analysis was performed to evaluate the competitiveness of seminatural Free Water Surface (FWS) wetlands compared to traditional wastewater-treatment plants. Six scenarios of the service costs of three FWS wetlands and three different wastewater-treatment plants based on active sludge processes were compared. The six scenarios were all equally effective in their wastewater-treatment capacity. The service costs were estimated using real accounting data from an experimental wetland and by means of a market survey. Some assumptions had to be made to perform the analysis. A reference wastewater situation was established to solve the problem of the different levels of dilution that characterize the inflow water of the different systems; the land purchase cost was excluded from the analysis, considering the use of public land as shared social services, and an equal life span for both seminatural and traditional wastewater-treatment plants was set. The results suggest that seminatural systems are competitive with traditional biotechnological systems, with an average service cost improvement of 2.1-fold to 8-fold, according to the specific solution and discount rate. The main improvement factor was the lower maintenance cost of the seminatural systems, due to the self-regulating, low artificial energy inputs and the absence of waste to be disposed. In this work, only the waste-treatment capacity of wetlands was considered as a parameter for the economic competitiveness analysis. Other goods/services and environmental benefits provided by FWS wetlands were not considered.
ISSN:0364-152X
1432-1009
DOI:10.1007/s00267-007-9001-6