Today's focus was on wastewater (or "avløpsvann" in Norwegian).
We visited Trondheim's wastewater treatment plant and took samples of the water at the beginning, middle, and end of the process.
Something that all of us were astounded by is that Trondheim's wastewater is CLEAN. In this city they have what is called a combined sewer, so all of the waste and stormwater are delivered to the plant through the same pipeline. This may have been why the water seemed so dilute. In general, it also seems that Norway has a much simpler process for treating its water than we do back in the states. Our instructor Cynthia said this is because Norway is blessed to have very high quality surface water, and they work hard to preserve their water. This differs from the U.S., where we tend to have quite low quality surface water. The emphasis is then placed on heavily treating that water instead of cleaning the source water.
