Testing real wastewater for research? Cape center makes it happen

SANDWICH — On the southeastern edge of Joint Base Cape Cod, at an unassuming spot between the Francis A. Crane Wildlife Management Area and Otis Air National Guard Base, experimentation is taking place to develop more efficient wastewater management systems aimed at improving the natural environment and safeguarding public health.

It all occurs at the Massachusetts Alternative Septic System Test Center, a proving ground for potential wastewater systems of the future. It's already an important resource for those researching better ways to manage wastewater, but now it's on the verge of expanding that work with help from a $1,975,000 grant through Mass Tech Collaborative’s Innovation Institute. The Healey-Driscoll administration recently announced the grant.

The money will help pay for construction of a clean water center with conference, office and laboratory spaces intended to solidify the test center's role as an innovation hub for wastewater treatment, education, collaboration and technology. That role is important in the face of climate change, especially in places like Cape Cod where embayments and ponds have been polluted by high levels of nutrients and where sea-level rise looms large.

Test Center Director Brian Baumgaertel, also a senior environmental specialist at the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment, is excited.

"This facility was set up to test emerging alternative onsite wastewater treatment technologies that are designed to be better than typical Title V wastewater treatment septic tank and leach fields or cesspools," he said during a recent tour of the site. "These are more advanced technologies for removal of certain contaminants, things like nitrogen and phosphorus. Title V systems are pretty good at removing pathogens and those types of things, stabilizing wastewater, getting it away from people, but they're not so great at making sure that we're addressing some of these other contaminants."

Researchers can also develop systems to take on other challenges, such as removal of pathogens, and contamination from pharmaceuticals, micro-plastics, and the so-called “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS.

Plans specifically call for constructing two pre-fabricated buildings — one of which is already underway and expected to be ready before the end of the year thanks to a separate $1.32 million grant by way of Barnstable County's American Rescue Plan Act award. The first building, manufactured in large sections in Georgia and brought to the site for assembly at the end of August, will house the test center's offices and include a conference area.

"It gives us a really nice area so we can start to host more educational sessions for homeowners, start to run classes for workforce development, and try to get the younger generation interested in this stuff," Baumgaertel said.

Workforce development is a top goal, he said, as there are a lot of retirements "and not a lot of people coming into fill those spots."

The second phase, expected to be ready in 2026, will be a building with three to four labs, which will allow the test center to expand the scope of services it offers. The center will "really be able to focus on some additional contaminants, like pathogenic organisms, and potentially being able to look at emerging contaminants.

"The laboratory spaces can be rented by the private companies (that test systems at the center), as well as university researchers who have some concepts for wastewater treatment that they don't really have a space to test them out in," Baumgaertel said.

Accessing real wastewater in a laboratory setting is difficult so "this will provide that opportunity for those researchers to do their research using real wastewater," he said.

Wastewater used for testing at the center comes from Joint Base Cape Cod.

The main treatment plant for the base is right next door, "so we just grab it before it goes over there, send it out to all the different experiments that are running here, and then we re-collect everything and it goes back over to the plant for final treatment," Baumgaertel explained. "That's one of the things that makes this place pretty unique."

Companies from all over the world have used the center to test the latest wastewater treatment ideas. At present, the facility's most distant clients are from Japan and Israel.

"There are not many similar locations anywhere in the United States or even on the North American continent," Baumgaertel. "The others that do exist are really focused on just certification of products. We're the only facility that I know of that allows full-scale research and development."

The work done at the test center could offer solutions for Cape Cod communities that are faced with an imperative to reduce nutrient loading into the region's ponds, rivers and embayments that occurs with septic systems that are not designed to remove them. There is also interest in reducing the contamination from pharmaceuticals and personal care products that have inadvertently entered the groundwater in the same way.

On Cape Cod, he said, "we have a big problem and this place helps provide some of those solutions."

One of the current leading technologies for nitrogen reduction, called NitROE, was tested out at the center, Baumgaertel said, noting, "it has some of the lowest nitrogen effluent, so the best removal for that particular contaminant that we're seeing."

"That one is well on its way to commercialization, and we'll probably see heavy utilization across Cape Cod as the towns figure out where do we sewer, where do we use these advanced technologies, and those things," he said. "They're all taking a look at how these systems can fit into their bigger wastewater treatment picture. That's pretty exciting that we were in on that from the start."

Heather McCarron writes about climate change, environment, energy, science and the natural world. Reach her at [email protected]

The Cape Cod Times is providing this coverage for free as a public service. Please take a momentto support local journalism by subscribing.