The Living Machine: Collier’s 24-year water filtration experiment is a success

By James Williams

Growing in a 70-by-70 foot screened-in enclosure, the Living Machine of the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary works silently, filtering 6,000 gallons of wastewater per day. For 24 years, this experimental water treatment plant has passed monthly Collier County Pollution Sewage Treatment Plant inspections just as efficiently as any conventional water treatment plant in the county.

When Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary opened in 1954, it greeted, on average, 10,000 visitors a year. Thirty years later, as many as 100,000 guests visited annually. By 1994, the surplus of visitors had overwhelmed the conventional septic system, which had not been built to handle that kind of usage. Ed Carlson, the director of the sanctuary at that time, realized that he would need two packaged-sized water treatment systems at the sanctuary to accommodate the amount of wastewater. Two smaller sized plants can filter 6,000 gallons per day, but Carlson knew it would be loud, costly and emit unpleasant odors. He said he feared the noise would disrupt the natural tranquility of the sanctuary, which allowed visitors to experience indigenous wildlife in their natural habitats.

Instead, he called John Todd Ph.D., a Canadian biologist, ecologist and civil engineer. Todd created the concept of Living Machines, and continues designing and building them all over the world. His philosophy behind the Living Machines is “the microcosm, as a tiny mirror of the macrocosm,” an ancient hermetic law that emphasizes the apparent harmonies, and organic symmetry between man (the microcosm) and nature (the Macrocosm). 

His Living Machines are modeled off natural wetlands’ and marshlands’ ability to filter water. The machines utilize nature’s technology, instead of trying to re-create it. He agreed to design a Living Machine for the sanctuary, and completed construction in October 1994. The Corkscrew Sanctuary Living Machine became the first in Florida. Ed Carlson, Todd, and wastewater and drink water certified operator, Neil Hardin were all present at the unveiling.

The Living Machine, being a legally sanctioned wastewater treatment plant, is required by Collier County to have an operator on sight every day. Hardin, the Sanctuary’s operator, has worked at the Living Machine since its creation in 1994. Before that, he worked as a certified operator for traditional water treatment plants throughout the state of Florida for 20 years. Todd taught Hardin how to manage the Machine, which Hardin says he instantly fell in love with. 

“This does not look like a traditional industrial wastewater treatment plant, but it is,” Hardin said. “At others I’ve worked at, we had these big 40 horsepower blowers. You couldn’t hear yourself think. But you could imagine napping here.”

Hardin is the only person in Florida certified by the state to work on a Living Machine.

The process, Hardin explains, starts when wastewater leaves the restrooms. It enters two septic tanks outside, where the water is first treated with microbial digestion, a breakdown of organic material by microbial organisms inside the tanks. Then the water is pumped through a PVC pipe, and enters the Living Machine.

The Living Machine functions like a pair of giant kidneys. Wastewater is pumped into one of the two ventilation tanks on either side of the machine before it passes through the ten 2,500-gallon, open-container tanks, which are erupting with ferns, rubber plants and strangler figs. After this, the water flows slowly  into the replicated marshlands. Over a matter of three days, the water travels downhill through the marshlands, currently made up of a monoculture of Spanish Needle Grass, which filter out the wastewater before it pours into the state-required chlorination tank, outside the enclosure. Carlson decided to pump the water through a de-chlorination tank afterwards, to ensure the water is chemical-free for the plants. 

“Do you remember that movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ when they say, ‘Nature finds a way’?” Hardin asked. ”Well, most of these plants that are here right now, we didn’t put them here.” 

The Living Machine originally housed only ferns, but over time, other plants volunteered in the tanks and the marshlands. Rubber trees and strangler figs dominate the tanks, and Spanish Needle covers over 90 percent of the marshlands. The result is a 90 percent reduction of water use, at a fraction of the cost of a conventional wastewater treatment plant: The whole Living Machine can run off of a 0.9 horsepower engine. 

 “Some people think it’s risky dink because it’s not highly mechanized,” Hardin said, “but this is nature doing its thing. I don’t know if you believe in God, but this is God’s gift to us.” 

Ed Carlson, the sanctuary director who implemented the Living Machine, said that during the early days, state and county organizations were skeptical of this alternative method of water treatment. The Environmental Protection Agency, Collier County Public Utilities, and the Collier Pollution Control Department declared the Living Machine an experimental method of water treatment in 1994, and despite consistent, efficient water treatment since then, it continues to hold that tag.

“The regulators were tough with us,” Carlson said. “It (the Living Machine) was subject to the same regulationsas conventional water treatment plants. That’s the reason Neil is here, because the regulators treat us like any other water treatment system.”

 This meant that if the Living Machine couldn’t perform at least as efficiently as a traditional water treatment plant, it would be shut down and replaced.

Tensy Thatcher, an inspector for Collier County Utilities, does monthly inspections at the Living Machine, as well as many of the traditional water treatment plants in Collier County. 

“Corkscrew’s Living Machine is a great alternative method for wastewater treatment,” Thatcher said in an email. “It is permitted appropriately and does all the required treatment in a creative and environmentally friendly way. It is nice to see this viable and innovative option for smaller treatment systems.”

The inspection sheet from December 2018 shows that everything is functioning as intended, to the standards of similar sized traditional plants. 

“Right now these have a role in simpler, smaller applications,” Carlson said. The Living Machine is not subjected to substances that traditional wastewater plants are capable of handling, like cleaning chemicals, kitchen grease or anti-bacterial medication. But Carlson says that doesn’t mean the Living Machine couldn’t handle these things.

“You could do this at a housing environment,” Carlson said. “It would just need certain applications to catch chemicals that the plants can’t handle.”

According to the EPA’s website, there are several federally funded Living Machines in the U.S. which are capable of operating up to 80,000 gallons of wastewater per day. The largest was in South Burlington County Virginia  which was discontinued in 2001 due to influx of population in the area. While it was active, it operated 80,000 gallons a day, servicing 1,200 people, about 15 percent of the country’s population.

Hardin said that the public hasn’t been properly informed about the potential of the Living Machine. He said education is key.

He recalled that, nearly 15 years ago, an FGCU student tried to get ahold of him to talk about installing a Living Machine on campus for students to study alternative forms of water treatment, but the meeting never came through. He said after a few missed calls and voicemails he never heard from that student, or any other FGCU student, again.

“FGCU is the environmental flagship of Florida; it makes sense for them to have this technology,” Hardin said. “FGCU deserves a Living Machine to study on campus, and the Living Machine deserves FGCU students.”

FGCU engineering professor Simeon Komisar, Ph.D., said that he once had a group of students try to design a Living Machine on campus, about a decade or so ago. 

“[They] drew up a design on paper, but it never went anywhere. It was a considerable cost for a problem that already had a solution,” Komisar said, referring to the Three Oaks treatment plant that FGCU uses.

Despite that, he says a Living Machine would have great educational value at FGCU.

“Kind of like the food forest,” Komisar said. “It would get students to understand what it takes to make a civilization run.”

So far, FGCU has no plans of implementing a Living Machine on campus, despite the [ML35] educational value, and the university’s stance on being the environmental flagship of Florida universities.

Instead the Living Machine of the Corkscrew Sanctuary continues working silently and effectively in the swamp, saving thousands of gallons of water and dollars in the process. 

            “I’m very happy, very happy about how it turned out,” Carlson said. “The Living Machine is silent, there’s no trouble with odors, it cleans water and we were able to recycle, reuse and cut our water use by 90 percent.”

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