Providing WSUD (Water Sensitive Urban Design) capabilities in a compact, modular design, Floating Treatment Wetlands reduce asset footprint compared to traditional constructed wetlands.
Key benefits of Floating Treatment Wetlands systems include –
- Nutrient removal (Total Phosphorus and Total Nitrogen).
- Improved land yield compared to constructed wetlands and conventional treatment, such as bioretention.
- Pollution reduction in aquatic environments with high levels of background pollutants
- Creating new habitats to act as a safe refuge for local wildlife, including nesting birds and amphibians, as well as providing aquatic habitat that can shelter fish and frogs from larger predators.
In traditional wetland installations, plant roots grow into the soil on the foreshore, which limits their exposure to the water column compared to FTWs.
FTW systems float on the water’s surface, providing ideal growing conditions for plant growth and facilitating the extension of plant roots directly into the water column. As this dense network of roots and attached biofilm develops, it provides large surface areas for stormwater treatment.
Compared to traditional constructed wetlands, FTWs reduce footprint requirements to meet water quality objectives by up to 60%. This improves land usability for the developer, whilst providing more open water, foreshore availability, and potential increases to land value.
Modular Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs) also provide scalability benefits over traditional constructed wetlands in staged developments and retrofits.
These modular systems can be reconfigured and modules added to increase the size of the wetlands. This allows them to meet changing community needs, catchment characteristics, or water quality outcomes, without the need for extensive site works. This can be a costly endeavour with traditional constructed wetlands, which require additional construction to extend existing infrastructure.
Large-scale green asset programs can be a costly investment for local councils, and FTWs also offer an opportunity to run pilot programs. These are smaller installations that can be scaled up after ongoing trials, allowing local stakeholders to assess the viability of the solution and its alignment with community objectives. These programs are not traditionally viable with conventional constructed wetlands.