In response to Michael Skorowski's questions:

>Regarding the Providence, Rhode Island living machine.  Why is the
>effluent discharged to the adjacent treatment works?  Isn't it clean
>enough to be dumped directly onto land or a body of water?

Like many of the early Living Machines, the Providence greenhouse system was designed as a prototype and research facility. At the beginning, there were many questions about its efficacy, so routing the effluent back to the main treatment plant was the prudent course of action. This discharge point also allowed us to experiment with the system without jeopardizing the Narragansett Bay environment.

The Living Machine in South Burlington, VT, which was funded by the EPA as an experimental system to test performance to higher treatment standards in a cold-weather environment, also discharges to the South Burlington WWTP. This has allowed for considerable amounts of valuable research on optimal hydraulics, plant species, EFB design, and the like.

>I have just begun to research sewage processing and using the by products
>for crop production for a self-sufficient community that is currently in the
>planning stages.  There is much in this paper I don't understand and I would
>like to.  Things like nitrification and un-ionized ammonia.  Why is nutrient
>reduction important and how safe for consumption are the plants growing in
>the sewage processing living machine?

It is important to keep in mind Angus Marland's excellent point on the fundamental differences between Living Machines and activated sludge and extended aeration plants. Nevertheless, many of your particular questions can be answered by conventional wastewater and biochemistry texts. It's quite helpful to read some of these before jumping into the alternative literature. Just pulling some random books off our shelves, here are several titles that may be of help:

Curds & Hawkes (eds) 1983. _Ecological Aspects of Used Water Treatment_Volumes 1 & 2. Academic Press.

Reed, Crites, & Middlebrooks. 1988. _Natural Systems for Waste Management and Treatment_  R.R. Donnelly & Sons.

Don't sweat it if you can't track down these particular titles; there are many resources on wastewater around.

-----Richard Boylan-----
        -----Ocean Arks International-----
                -----Lake Restoration Project Manager-----