LiveSmart BC Community Hero
LiveSmart BC Community Hero: Kim Rink
When it comes to thinking green, Kim Rink thinks of sewage.
It can be used to make cities bloom, and restore deserts or eroded and overgrazed rural land to healthy crop production, said Rink, president of Eco-Tek Wastewater Treatments.
An architect, Rink became interested in solar aquatics in the late 1980s and established his Langley company in the early 1990s.
His recent and current projects include a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) sewage treatment project in a poor area of Havana, Cuba, a municipal project in resource-rich Alberta, and a project at an eco-friendly, high-end private housing development on James Island off Sidney on Vancouver Island. A major project designed and started in Jordan was put on hold when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
The firm is currently in discussions with Van Dusen Gardens for a treatment plant to reclaim water and biomass from the facility's sewage, and possibly from the surrounding residential neighbourhood.
At the CIDA project in Cuba, the surrounding grounds will be used for an orchard and a garden, fertilized by the biomass and watered with the treated water. On James Island, the water will be used on a golf course.
Eko-Tek appears poised on the brink of a major market. Global warming is making the need for water conservation and re-use increasingly vital, and aging municipal infrastructure in Canada ensures a need for ongoing upgrades or replacement.
The town of Cynthia, west of Edmonton near Drayton Valley, was a good example. The small town was considering a $1.5-million sewage lagoon. Rink proposed his $1-million solar aquatics system. Instead of having waste water to dispose from a lagoon, Eko-Tek's water will be clean enough for the municipality to sell, at $5 per cubic metre, to oil companies for use in the drilling process - helping the town pay back the cost of its new system.
But that's just one of the benefits, said Eko-Tek's CEO Patrick Meyer.
Solar aquatics "mimics a natural freshwater wetland," said Rink, using plants and bacteria to break down the sewage, with clean water, soil, and saleable trees and plants as end products.
The Eko-Teck treatment process starts with screening to remove paper, rubber, and other objects before the sewage goes to an aeration or blending tank. Other steps include various ponds with aquatic plants, which not only gobble up and process the sludge, but whose fine roots provide an ideal habitat for bacteria and various aquatic creatures, from worms to snails, which neutralize or metabolize contaminants.
The aquatic plants and trees grown in sludge can be an additional source of revenue through sale, said Rink:
"You send us sewage, we'll send you flowers."
Visit the company online at www.ecotek.ca.
