From sewer to soil: planetary boundaries, metabolic rift and Salt Lake City's wastewater treatment

Salt Lake City's water resource recovery facility (WRRF) is undergoing a multi-year upgrade in order to reduce nitrogen-induced eutrophication in the Great Salt Lake. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles all converge at WRRFs where they can, in part, be managed. In this paper, I perform a general assessment of the environmental and sociological trade-offs of upgrading the WRRF using a ‘planetary boundary' perspective. This perspective will illuminate the connections of local wastewater treatment to regional and global ecosystems along the four transgressed planetary boundaries of climate, biodiversity, land use, and the biogeochemical flows with their links emphasized through the lens of Karl Marx's concept of 'ecological rift.' I propose that WRRFs are uniquely positioned to significantly diminish these planetary boundary exceedances when coupled with agroecology.