Sustainable development through sustainable designs for water and wastewater infrastructure is a means of accomplishing balance. The traditional answer in the past for most communities was to move toward centralized wastewater collection and treatment. As funding for these systems has become scarce and effective alternatives more prevalent, decentralized treatment is becoming the solution of choice for many communities.
In the decentralized approach groundwater is extracted, utilized, and treated onsite; then it is returned close to its point of origin to recharge the aquifer. From small residential systems to large scale facility or community discharges more than a million gallons per day, these natural approaches provide suitable long-term treatment solutions, better development practices, and can be more cost-effective than centralized systems. Due to the compactness of the model there is less energy consumption.