Understanding Floating Treatment Wetlands with Coy Clark from Atlan Stormwater

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Key Topics

Coy's path into floating wetlands: thirty years in water, a LinkedIn video of a 16,000 square foot wetland in Brisbane, and a cold email to the CEO that became the job.

Who Atlan is: a 50+ year Australian manufacturer, formerly SPEL, with an 18-year floating wetland product and a US arm Coy has been building for about a year and a half.

The module: triangular HDPE, about four and a quarter square feet, with a removable basket of pea gravel instead of soil so you do not muddy the water you came to clean.

The point most people miss: the plant builds the habitat; it does not eat the pollution. Roots, biofilm and oxygen support a microbial community that can grow three to four times over.

Daphnia: one can consume upwards of 35,000 algal or bacterial cells a day, part of what Atlan's CEO calls the concentrated wetland effect.

Versus a constructed wetland: soil treats roughly the top twelve inches, while floating roots hang a meter or more into the water column.

Maintenance: eyes on it every four months to check for invasives, connector pins and anchors. Routine plant harvesting is not necessary.

Anchoring: cast aluminium earth anchors most of the time, and boat anchors sized for hurricane winds in the Village of Pinecrest, Florida.

The plastic question: UV-stabilized HDPE with a ten year warranty and a hundred year design life.

Where it works: warm ponds three to five feet deep, and creeks as litter traps. Where it does not: the middle of a deep lake, or a pond too clean to feed the plants.

Sizing: Florida's five percent rule, Australia's roughly 0.85 percent of the watershed, and Atlan's new online calculator.

In the field: 120 modules protecting a stocked pond at the University of Kentucky, and Georgia volunteers collecting 15 to 20 pounds of litter every five or six weeks.

The rest of the range: Atlan Filter, Flow Filter, Flow Guard, Atlan Trap, and the Atlan Cube, rated around 42 metric tons per square meter. 

 

INSTALLATION TIME LAPSE VIDEO LINK

Quotes

"The role of the plant is to create the habitat underneath the wetland, because that habitat will draw in life." ~Coy Clark

"It's nature on steroids. My boss calls it the concentrated wetland effect." ~Coy Clark

"Expect this to be a generational stormwater asset. It's a hundred year design life." ~Coy Clark

 

In this episode of the Stormwater World Podcast, host Ty Garmon talks with Coy Clark of Atlan Stormwater about floating treatment wetlands: what they are, what they do, and where they belong. Coy explains why the plants are not the treatment, but the habitat that draws in the microbes and microfauna that are. He is equally direct about the limits: a deep lake is the wrong place, and no floating wetland is a silver bullet for an algae bloom. 

 

The views expressed are that of the individual and do not represent the opinions of any companies past, present or future.

 

Connect with Coy Clark:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coyaclark/

Atlan Stormwater: https://atlanstormwater.com

 

Connect with Ty Garmon, LEED AP:

Connect with Ty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tygarmon/

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