- Gondwana Namib Park/ News 22.02.07



		News 2007News 22.02.07

From the Shower into the Garden - 22.02.07
The gardens of Namib Desert Lodge are nowadays irrigated with waste water which has been purified by natural means. This is the result of an irrigation system combined with a purification plant. The plant from Aqua Services & Engineering was taken into use a month ago. By now the necessary micro organisms have established themselves in the bio-filter.

And this is how it works: in the septic tank raw solids are separated from the water. Then the trickling filter removes organic compounds. Dead micro organisms are disposed of in the settling tank and finally the clarified water is disinfected with chlorine. The trickling filter is the heart of the plant. Micro organisms settle on the filling material like a biological lawn. As the waste water is sprinkled over the filter it feeds the micro organisms – purification the natural way.

At peak times the plant can process 25 m³ of waste water per day, which

The trickling filter. Source:
Aqua Services & Engineering

equals the volume generated by about 200 people. Only 20 percent of the waste water is lost through evaporation. To keep this bio-filter going is absolutely easy – just refill the chlorine every month, and clean the septic tank every two years. Sewage sludge is dried and disposed of once a year.

During the next years all the parks of the Gondwana Desert Collection will be equipped with a treatment plant, even though all of them have more than enough ground water at their disposal to supply the accommodation centres. Thanks to porous sandstone even Gondwana Namib Park has a subterranean water reservoir which is always kept topped up by the Naukluft Mountains in the east. Nevertheless, the intention is to increase water savings in the future. The plants are an investment totalling 1 million Namibia Dollar – or about 105,000 Euro at the current exchange rate of N$ 9.5 to the Euro.