A Farm Scale integrated constructed wetland to treat farmyard dirty water.

End of Project ReportIn Ireland, the use of constructed wetlands to manage agricultural waters such as farm yard dirty water has been primarily based on an ecosystems approach. Integrated constructed wetlands, which are a design specific approach of conventional surface flow constructed wetlands, were first used in the Anne Valley, Waterford, Ireland (Harrington and Ryder, 2002). At present, 13 farms in the Anne Valley catchment use integrated constructed wetlands to manage farmyard dirty water (Harrington et al., 2004). Fundamental to their design is water quality improvement, landscape fit (designing the wetland into the topography of the landscape) and that the wetland provides an ecological habitat within the agricultural landscape. Typically, integrated constructed wetlands have greater land area requirements than conventional surface flow constructed wetlands in order to provide for these other fundamental ecological services. Few studies (Ryan, 1990) have addressed the issue of quality and quantity of farmyard dirty generated at farm-scales in Ireland. No studies were readily available documenting the effectiveness of a farm-scale constructed or integrated constructed wetland in Ireland to remove nutrients such as phosphorus (P) from dairy farmyard dirty water on a mass basis. To address such, the main objectives of this research were to (i) determine the quality and quantity of farmyard dirty water generated at a farm-scale (ii) determine the effectiveness of three treatment cells of an integrated constructed wetland to treat farmyard dirty, using the difference between input and output mass loadings, (iii) investigate if there were seasonal effects in the wetland’s performance to retain phosphorus, and (iv) assess the impact of the integrated constructed wetland on the receiving environment by monitoring soil-water parameter concentrations up gradient, down gradient and within the wetland system using piezometers at different soil depths.Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Programm