Wastewater
Municipal wastewater consists primarily of domestic wastes
from households and industrial wastewater from manufacturing
and commercial activities. Both types of wastewater are
collected in sanitary or combined sewers, and are usually
treated at a municipal wastewater treatment plant. After
treatment, the wastewater is discharged to its receiving
water (e. g., a river, an estuary, or an ocean).
The City of Atlanta’s Bureau of Wastewater Services
(Department of Watershed Management) operates the wastewater
collection, conveyance and treatment system, which consists
of approximately 2,000 miles of sanitary and combined sewers,
six Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO)
treatment plants, four water reclamation centers (WRCs) and
sixteen pump stations. The WRCs treat more than 170 million
gallons of wastewater per day. The high quality, treated
effluent from the City’s WRCs is discharged into the
Chattahoochee River, one of Georgia's most important water resources.
The City of Atlanta has a population of approximately 400,000
and is the central hub of an urban metropolis of more than 4 million.
The city’s wastewater system serves more than 1.5 million
people who commute to the city to work or who live outside the
city in Dekalb, Fulton, and Clayton counties.
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