Sustainability and Disinfection: Incorporating Life Cycle Assessment into Wastewater Disinfection Design

In January 2010, the American Society of Civil Engineers conducted a series of workshops to address problems with infrastructure deficiencies in the United States. The outcomes associated with these workshops were discussed in Civil Engineering Magazine (April 2010). Based upon these outcomes, a consensus was reached that the water and wastewater infrastructure in the United States is in a state of crisis and that the following recommendations may provide a roadmap to ease that crisis and a vision for improvement:Increase Federal Leadership in Infrastructure;Promote Sustainability and Resilience;Develop Federal, Regional and State Infrastructure Plans;Address Life-Cycle Costs and Ongoing Maintenance; andIncrease and Improve Investment from all Stakeholders.The above information and the predicted infrastructure rehabilitation and replacement needs expected in the next decade prompted the USEPA to commit to promoting sustainable infrastructure practices. If successfully implemented, these practices would help reduce the predicted gap between infrastructure needs and infrastructure spending (USEPA, 2006). Disinfection is one of the key unit processes for the protection of public health. In order to fully implement the four pillars of the USEPA sustainable infrastructure model, approaches must be taken to incorporate sustainability into engineering design and operation of disinfection unit processes for water and wastewater infrastructure systems.