Decentralized Approach to Growth Management Using MBR’s

Growing areas, such as St. Charles County in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, faced the challenges of providing wastewater collection and treatment for its economic boom. The major challenge involved the inability of local government to find sufficient resources to meet the aggressive schedule of developers. The advent of the Membrane BioReactor (MBR) treatment plant provided a decentralized alternative that proved to be less expensive and actually better for the environment. This paper explores this theory by detailing Duckett Creek Sanitary District’s process of developing a decentralized system using MBR technology to serve this fast-growing suburban area. Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (the permit agency for wastewater treatment plants) uses biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS) as the primary indicators of the quality of plant effluent. The use of MBR technology could eliminate environmental arguments against smaller, sub-regional plants located along creeks and streams which flowed through residential areas.

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