Carey Clark is a graduate research assistant in the Master of Science program within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Auburn University. He obtained his B.S. in biosystems engineering at Auburn University in 2021. He has previously interned with CDM Smith as an environmental engineer. The focus of his research is land application of treated wastewater at centralized wastewater treatment facilities within the Black Belt of Alabama.

The challenges associated with decentralized wastewater treatment in the Black Belt have been documented over the past decade. Within the past few years, national news outlets have made it known about the infrastructure issues within the Alabama Black Belt. The Black Belt faces unique wastewater infrastructure challenges due to clay soils, high poverty, and small, rural populations. Due to these economic and environmental challenges, this has led to centralized wastewater treatment systems being a prominent wastewater treatment pathway. 55% of the population of the Black Belt, excluding Montgomery County, utilizes centralized systems to treat wastewater. About 13% of the centralized wastewater treatment facilities in the Black Belt dispose of the wastewater via land application with the rest of the centralized systems being discharged to surface water bodies. Land application sites of treated wastewater in the Black Belt is complicated by impermeable soils and abundant precipitation. Based on the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program, 67% of the wastewater treatment facilities that discharge effluent to land application sites had issue with violations with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2018. The scope of this talk will be to discuss strategies and concepts that enhance spray field infiltration, routing groundwater more effectively, and comparing land application sites to successful facilities within the Black Belt and within the rest of Alabama.