Water Treatment Technology on the Ganges River, Year 1

To employ Bailey Green as a Senior Affiliate of the Pacific Institute to develop a proposal for a more sustainable and effective wastewater treatment technique for the Ganges River in Varanasi, India.  Bailey’s role as Senior Affiliate will be to serve as technical advisor and author of a report that will document plans for the construction of an alternative wastewater treatment system in Varanasi. Most large-scale water treatment processes, especially primary treatment (designed to remove fecal solids) are mechnically-aerated activated-sludge processes. Bailey has developed an alternative that relies on an anaerobic process that uses digester ponds to create dissolved oxygen from anaerobic decomposition that is then incorporated into aquatic plant matter, like algae. This process allows for reuse of treated water (for agriculture), creation and recovery of methane (as an energy byproduct of the anaerobic digestion process) and finally, carbon sequestration as organic solids are converted to plant matter. The alternative not only requires much less energy to run, but also can create energy, usable water and potentially, carbon credits. Bailey developed the system, which has been patented in the U.S.