Achieving Water Authority Compliance with Automated Wastewater Treatment
Food processors must meet wastewater effluent requirements for the EPA as well as National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits and state or municipal regulation. Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA has identified 65 pollutants and classes of pollutants as “toxic pollutants,” of which 126 specific substances have been designated “priority” toxic pollutants. Failing compliance can result in severe fines that quickly escalate.
Wastewater generated from food processing operations, however, can contain large amounts of suspended and dissolved solids, inorganics, nitrogenous organics, organic carbon, as well as nutrients. It can also have high biochemical and chemical oxygen demands. Consequently, such wastewater needs to be treated so it will not impair receiving waters or disrupt publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) when discharged to sewers.