Wetlands Transform a City’s Sewage Through a Bit of Solar Alchemy
Every evening, when the twilight sky casts its spell across Kolkata’s Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, motorists whizzing toward the airport can catch a glimpse of an eerie-looking expanse of water peeking from behind the area’s gaudy billboards along the city’s eastern fringe. Most have no idea that they’re looking at the lungs and kidneys of their city.
The East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) are a key component of Kolkata’s waste-management resilience. Abutting this city of five million, the 12,500 hectare space, which includes about 4,000 hectares of sewage-fed bheries (fisheries), has managed to survive the onslaught of Kokata’s eastward urbanization. No more than one meter deep, this unique ecological zone’s sewage-fed aquaculture and garbage-fed horticulture provide the city with a natural waste recycling process not quite replicated anywhere else in the world. Indeed, it is the only sewage treatment “facility” that exists within the city limits of Kolkata, and offers a key element of redundancy to the city’s overtaxed waste-management systems.
http://100resilientcities.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/entry/wetlands-transform-a-citys-sewage-through-a-bit-of-solar-alchemy
