Ahoy Explorers!
Time for another Story of Hope, this time from the beautiful country of Denmark. The captial of Denmark, Copenhagen, had seen similar times as we did in Singapore when our main river was heavily polluted. Today I will be summarising this document released by the Ministry of Environment which recounts how Copenhagen was able to turn things around for their port.
Background to state of pollution in the Port of Copenhagen
The port of Copenhagen used to be an industrial port in the 1980s to 1990; the water had high turbidity due to the large amounts of organic material, persistent chemicals and microorganisms. The sludge at the bottom of the seabed was also highly contaminated with heavy metals and tributyltin (TBT).
The local authorities found the primary cause/source of pollution in the port to be sewerage discharge, especially when after a heavy rainfall when the tanks would overflow.
Mitigation measures taken
The City of Copenhagen hence made it a priority to give their sewerage systems and wastewater treatment plants an upgrade. These are some of the changes they made:
- Reduced the number of overflow sites; 95 overflow sites in 1990 directed diluted sewage into the Sound
- Added extra overflow collection tanks to store the excess rainwater and sewage when rainfall is high
- Overflow tanks are controlled by a central IT system that monitor and control the wastewater system in Copenhagen
- Sensors and water-level gauges as well as a water quality monitoring system was added into the newly constructed harbour swimming basins (for people to play and swim in). They would alert the officials if the water quality has gone south and they can close off the public swimming areas.
End result
After changing the way wastewater was managed in the city, the port of Copenhagen’s water quality improved significantly by 2007. Now a welcoming, lively place with public swimming facilities, restaurants and more visitors; virtually opening up a new channel for economic revenue.
The chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharge dropped from 280,000 to 61,250; heavy metal pollution reduced from 450kg to 100kg and most importantly, the volume of diluted sewage discharged dropped reduced from 1.6million cubic metres in 1996 to 350,000 cubic metres in 2007! [Detailed results are in Table 1, page 5 of the document]
Further studies found that the quality of living for biodiversity around the port had improved too; species indicators for clean water also returned. Cleaning the harbour also, as mentioned earlier, brought in new possibilities for recreational activities for those living around the area. Thus improving quality of life around the port for both humans and nature.
This shows that with proper environmental goals and a good understanding of the immense potential in store that comes with a more environmentally conscious lifestyle is essential to bring society towards a more sustainable future. Even the Ministry of Environment acknowledge in their article section, “Lessons learnt”, that it is possible to bring life back to a polluted or contaminated ecosystem. Thinking of the applications, of course with the proper management, funding and support of the locals, this also proves that we can reverse the damage we caused. Until today, Copenhagen is creating new environmental goals to achieve – sustainable urban development, transport, energy efficiency etc. You can find out more from this web article I found; also, if you ever plan to visit the beautiful city, there is a guide on sustainable practices that you can do when you go to Copenhagen, just click the image below!
Happy exploring guys and I’ll see you on the next blog post.
Stay safe, drink lots of water and keep on saving the Earth!