The Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment has developed an educational curriculum as a joint effort between Consortium delegates from the academic and advisory communities including individuals from public agencies (state, counties and towns) and private companies (consultants, manufacturers, engineers, designers soil scientists, and service providers).

The effort to develop a model curriculum was prompted by two educational projects involving over 40 training and education specialists in the on-site wastewater field from throughout the U.S. and Canada. The goal was to increase professionalism and improve the state of practice in the onsite/decentralized wastewater field. The projects are in the final development stages.

This work was supported [in part] by the National Decentralized Water Resources Capacity Development Project with funding provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through a Cooperative Agreement (EPA No. CR827881-01-0) with Washington University in St. Louis. The results have not been reviewed by EPA or Washington University in St. Louis. The views expressed in these materials are solely those of NCSU, the University of Arkansas and the authors. EPA and Washington University in St. Louis do not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in the materials.

Overall Combined Curriculum

The outline for an overall conceptual curriculum that combines and coordinates the efforts of both of the Capacity Development Projects is provided below. This over-arching combined curriculum lays the ground work for further curriculum development beyond these two projects.

1. Fundamental principles
2. Planning
3. System and materials management
4. Wastewater processes
5. Soil and site evaluation
6. On-site technology
7. Troubleshooting and resolution
8. Regulatory and permit issues

Each of these topics was organized into subheadings representing areas for which instructional materials would need to be developed to complete the entire curriculum. Completion of the two existing projects provides excellent training and educational materials for substantial parts of the overall curriculum. It is not possible to complete curriculum development with the existing resources. However, by developing the overall curriculum and clearly identifying all of its parts, we have laid out a road map for eventual completion of the curriculum as additional resources become available in the future.

The following outline illustrates the detail of the overall curriculum. Those aspects that have been developed to date are marked with a plus sign (+):

1. Fundamental principles
   • Constants, units and conversions +
   • Overview of wastewater characteristics +
   • Basic engineering principles +
   • Fundamental hydraulics +
   • Public and environmental health concepts
   • Flow calculations
2. Planning
   • Land use
   • Environmental concerns
   • Risk assessment
   • Scale (individual lot, subdivision, watershed)
   • Distributed infrastructure
3. System and materials management
   • Systems management
   • Materials management +
4. Wastewater processes
   • Wastewater characteristics +
   • Chemical + (partial)
   • Biological + (partial)
   • Physical + (partial)
5. Soil and site evaluation
   • Introduction to soils +
   • Soil morphology +
   • Soil treatment +
   • Water movement +
   • Soil interpretations +
   • Mapping
   • Site evaluation +
   • Hydrology
   • Performance predictive tools (modeling)
6. On-site technology<
   • Overview +
   • Design + (partial)
   • Installation + (partial)
   • Monitoring and inspection + (partial)
   • Operation and maintenance + (partial)
7. Troubleshooting and resolution
   • Tools
   • Processes
8. Regulatory and permit issues
   • National code
   • State code
   • Local code
   • Processes involved in getting a permit
   • Process to evaluate a new technology

The Practitioner Curriculum is an effort to formalize and coordinate training opportunities for field practitioners. The goal of the curriculum is to

• improve field practitioners’ abilities to effectively utilize onsite and decentralized technologies and improve the State of Practice (SOP)
• enhance opportunities for the general population to make the best use of the decentralized approach to their community’s wastewater treatment requirements.

The goal of the Academic project was to develop appropriate modules for teaching a one-semester laboratory and field course in onsite and decentralized wastewater treatment and natural water reclamation systems for third- and fourth-year engineering students. The modules can also be adapted for undergraduate and graduate-level university courses in Environmental Health and other non-engineering curricula. The Academic curriculum will be produced on CD-ROM with a navigational and organizational macro. The format is such that the materials are accessible and useable through software that instructors will have readily available.