A few numbers about water and sludge:

It was July 2003 when the first house in the Village was completed and the owner moved in.
On 30 June 2009, we had 56 houses completed and occupied. This means that approximately a third of the homes are now built.

In 2003, we were told that it would take approximately 10 years before we needed to get the 60kL sludge tank in the Waste Water Treatment Plant emptied. We have, however, managed to fill this tank in 6 years, and emptying it this week has cost us nearly $5,000.00

As the number of completed houses is increasing rapidly, including the 24 Cottages due for completion in Aug/Sept, it is likely to be a lot sooner than another 6 years before the sludge tank next needs emptying - probably around 2 – 2.5 years. Once all the houses are built, we could maybe be looking at sludge removal once yearly.

With the associated costs of this process in mind, should we be looking at encouraging something like composting toilets, which would take pressure off the WWTP and keep the waste on site for possible use. We will still need the WWTP but it would be cheaper to run with less sludge in the system.

Should we be asking the BDC to strongly encourage composting toilets in all newly submitted plans?

Would anyone like to put their thinking cap on and do some outside-the-square thinking about dealing with sludge and its costs?

And to finish with - a big statistic: In the six-year period July 2003 to 30 June 2009, we have collectively pushed 10,300,000 (ten million three hundred thousand) liters of water through the WWTP (10,300 kL).

John Heij - for the WWTP Team